Back to GatefoldIssue #6 by Meriades Rai
April 2008 |
The mortuary was located in a modern annex of the Gartnavel General Hospital. Tonight there was one Technician on duty. His name was Camden Druid. He was twenty-eight years old, born and lived in Glasgow all his life. He had spent six years at the Wolfson Medical School and had a fiancée named Bridget. They were due to be married the following summer. They both wanted children. Camden was six foot one, in good health. He had reddish-brown hair, more rust than ginger, and pale green eyes. He wore glasses. He was freckled. He smiled a lot, told dirty jokes. He was well-liked. Both his parents were still alive, still happily married. He’d had a sister, Kathleen, who’d died five years ago when she was nineteen. Accidental drug overdose, someone had spiked her drink at a party. Camden collected books. His favourite author was Michael Connolly, an American crime writer. He -
Details, details. None of it mattered. To Karloff Mordo, the man on the other side of the desk was just another sack of bone and flesh… and blood.
“Now listen,” Camden sighed, standing up wearily from his chair. “I don’t think you’re hearing me. This is a restricted area. You shouldn’t even be here, in front of me, let alone requesting access to the morgue, not without all the official paperwork. So, whoever you are and whatever you want, I reckon you should just - ”
Mordo withdrew the copper sickle from his overcoat. The blade, curved in a delicate three-quarter circle, glowed in the harsh light of the Coroner’s Office like a moon frozen in mid-eclipse. Camden paled. He took a step backwards, hand reaching to steady himself against the edge of the desk.
“Mother of fuck,” he whispered. “Fuck! Sweet Jesus Chr - ”
Mordo swung the sickle and cleaved through the Technician’s neck a half-inch above the shoulder, severing tendons, trachea and spinal cord with one blow. The air misted with blood and fluid. The upper torso bucked, arms flapping uselessly. Arteries gushed. The head smacked against a wall like a misshapen basketball and then landed on the table, wet and heavy. Mordo attended the body as it slid and fell, ignoring the blood that lashed his clothes and boots. He was dressed in black, including gloves. The Technician’s corpse was clad in a long coat, white before all the haemorrhaging, now scarlet. Mordo collected a keycard from an inside pocket. He then grasped the severed head by the hair and took it with him as he stepped around the desk and used the keycard to open the door to the morgue.
The morgue was lit pale blue with fluorescents and was bitterly chill. The air smelled of vanilla and Phenol, and cold steel, but with the lingering odour of decomposition beneath. Mordo strode down a short corridor, the head in his hand leaking a drizzle of blood on the floor, then passed through another door into the main chamber. This new room was large, with three slabs - one laden with white sheets to be laundered, computer printouts, clipboards and document files - and one wall dominated by ranks of cadaver drawers. Mordo checked the paperwork on the slab, one clipboard in particular, then matched the name he was searching for with the number of the appropriate drawer. He pulled it open, revealing the corpse contained inside.
Male, heavy-set, with limp black hair now as waxen as his dead flesh and a face that had been strong and brooding in life but which was now sunken and ghastly in the icy light. The name on the clipboard was that of one Anthony Ludgate, a Doctor from the nearby Rosewell Institute, recently murdered. Details. Again, who the man had been did not matter to Mordo; he was concerned only in what he represented.
Using the curved point of the sickle as surely as a scalpel Mordo then set to work, silently, methodically. He sliced off Ludgate’s face, carving a steady edge beneath the hairline and along either temple, then down beneath the jut of the jaw. He peeled away the flesh, dry as parchment rather than moist as when alive, with delicate precision. Then he repeated this operation with the face of Camden Druid. And, when he held the wet grist of that face in his gloved hands like a vinyl mask, he transferred it to Ludgate’s bloodless skull and meticulously attached it in place with a collection of black pins from a tin in his coat pocket. Each time the point of a pin pierced flesh it hissed, as if hot. Indeed, as Mordo worked the leather of his gloves began to scorch. But he didn’t falter.
Finally, when he was done, he stepped back.
“By the unholy command of the Dread Dormammu,” he intoned, “I brand thee with the mark of the Faltine. Rise now, first of the Order of the Damned.”
For a minute or two there was nothing, save for the hissing and the spitting of the burning pins, melding two vintages of dead flesh. But then, as decreed, so Karloff Mordo’s ghoul did stir, and then - slowly, stiffly - did rise from its narrow metal coffin. And, wickedly, its new mouth stretched into a scarlet grin.
“A fresh face,” the fiend hissed, its voice a tangle of rot and black fluid. “Such a generous gift.”
Dead eyes rolled in their sockets, the bloodied flesh here still knitting with old bone. Mordo stared on, impassive. “Name yourself,” he murmured.
The fiend’s grin shone bright in the cold fluorescent light. “A disciple of the Faltine,” it whispered. “And you may call me… Druid.”
MARVEL 2000 PRESENTS
"PREMEDITATION"
Written by Meriades Rai
“Bollocks.”
Stefan Strang hurled his cell phone to the floor, causing the casing to shatter, then sat back in his chair with his arms folded and his bottom lip peaked. He looked about ten years old. The other three individuals occupying the booth each glanced across at their pouting companion. Seated immediate beside Stefan, an attractive woman with a cherrywood-red bob and amused green eyes edged with thick mascara sipped at her cup of tea. “I take it,” she purred, “that your lady friend has no wish to speak to you…?”
“More likely she’s not allowed to.”
The four of them were sitting in a greasy spoon café on Wardour Street, taking breakfast and tea. The woman with the red hair was Patsy Walker. The heavy-set black man munching on a cheese and bacon bagel opposite her was Eric Brooks. Alongside Eric, opposite Stefan, was the youngest of the group, a waif of a girl with a platinum blonde fringe that swept her eyes. Her name was Samantha Parrington, and she was currently shovelling heaps of fried egg, tomato and mushroom into her mouth as if she didn’t know where her next meal was coming from. They had each recently adopted new names to go with their collective new direction in life - Hellcat, Blade, Valkyrie and, most reluctantly, Doctor Strange - but on this morning, having emerged from the claustrophobic atmosphere of their Sanctum Sanctorum in Greenwich, there seemed to be a communal need to feel normal again, if only for a brief time.
Of course, all things considered, this was all rather an illusion… quite literally.
The café was busy, but not one of the quartet’s fellow patrons glanced in their direction at Stefan’s noisy display of petulance. Nor was anyone curious as to the decidedly odd garb favoured by the four of them, Stefan’s gold and silver gloves and Samantha’s cloak and scabbard in particular. And no one recognised the crust of scar on Eric’s face that might have exposed him as the convict recently escaped from a prison in Dublin, whose likeness had been prominent on television and in newspapers these past few days; nor did anyone recognise Samantha under similar circumstances, as her countenance had also become rather infamous since an incident in a Glasgow mental health institution earlier that week where a man had been murdered.
With all this in mind it would have been foolhardy for the companions to venture out in public without the safeguard of a masking enchantment, courtesy of Stefan and his runic gloves. The spell had thus far proved perfectly effectual, disguising not only their appearances but also their words and deeds, cocooning them in an illusory protective bubble. It would, therefore, have been churlish for any one of them to grumble about their lot in such a situation. But in truth that morning’s outing, whilst welcome, had also served to remind them just how their lives had been utterly transfigured since being assembled by the enigmatic old man known as The Ancient… and how, no matter what they did, they were presently as far removed from these routine human comforts all around them as it was possible to be.
Patsy leaned in towards Stefan. “Tell us about her, this… what was her name?”
“Clea. Clea Balsamo. I met her while on a skiing trip in St. Moritz,” Stefan said. “I thought she was a complete nutcase at first. All that New Age bullshit: crystals, tarot cards, channelling whalesong, whatthefuckever. But she was gorgeous, so of course I ended up speaking to her in the bar one night.”
“Of course,” Patsy murmured, wryly. If Stefan picked up on her tone he ignored it.
“I found out that she was interesting, intelligent. Certainly not a kook. But she was also a trophy wife for some Italian corporation suit, Giuseppe Balsamo. She was twenty-four now, seventeen when she married him. He basically ignored her, except when he came back from his international business trips and wanted to fuck. Otherwise he’d just leave her to her own devices and pay off her credit cards at the end of every month. Oh, and every once in a while he’d get drunk and beat the living crap out of her.”
“Charming.”
“Yeah.” Stefan stared into the mug of coffee he’d been nursing since finished his breakfast and which was now stone cold. “Anyway, I fell for her in a big way. We started to see each other, as friends at first but then as lovers pretty quickly. We’d meet up all over Europe, but mostly at a château in Lausanne that her husband had given her as a gift on her twenty-first birthday but then forgotten about. The relationship had been going on for about four months before Clea told me that she’d made a discovery about Giuseppe. Turns out he was involved in some nasty underworld shit. Not just drugs and prostitution but also sex slavery and trafficking, often kids. Clea said she’d found some DVDs the week before and looked through a couple. Giuseppe was on them, one with some girl who couldn’t have been more than ten years old… then another where he and another man were whipping a screaming woman to death with chains.”
Stefan’s companions were suddenly all looking on in icy silence. Patsy wasn’t smiling any longer. Eric’s eyes were black as coal pits. Samantha shivered and drew her midnight blue cloak tight about her shoulders.
“You helped her get away from him, right?” Patsy asked, softly. “I mean, you didn’t just…”
Stefan flushed a little. “I tried. Oh, come on, don’t look at me like that, of course I fucking tried. I couldn’t stop thinking about what could happen to her, what he’d do to her, if he found out about us.”
“Or what he’d do to you,” Eric interjected.
Stefan buried his face in his hands. “Fuck. It was about six weeks after that when I had my accident. My cell rang and it was Clea’s number, but when I answered it was his voice. He told me he knew everything, and that Clea was going to pay the price. That’s when I ploughed into a car coming the other way. Ended up in hospital, woke up to find I’d lost my… my…”
He pulled his hands away from his eyes, sighing. Inside the golden gloves those hands were real enough, but were he to remove the gloves then all that would be left was a pair of bandaged stumps, the result of the amputation he’d incurred following the accident.
“This is the fifth time I’ve tried to get in contact with her since leaving Germany,” Stefan murmured. “Just the same message on her cell every time.”
“Do you think she’s dead?” Samantha asked. “That her husband killed her?”
Stefan grimaced. The blonde girl’s manner was, as ever, blunt and rather emotionless. It was only when she drew her magical blade, Dragonfang, from its scabbard and her personality altered into that of Valkyrie that she ever displayed any real sentiment, and that was typically a passion for conflict. Stefan hadn’t yet decided which of these separate aspects he felt more comfortable with.
“Honestly? I don’t know,” he muttered. “Maybe I even…”
“Hope that she is dead?” Patsy offered. “Because if she isn’t then there’s a chance that her current situation - and condition - is a lot worse?”
Stefan closed his eyes. Fuck. Fuck.
Samantha forked a quarter of tomato and popped into her mouth. “So,” she said, as she chewed, “when are we leaving?”
The others looked at her. It was Eric who spoke. “Leaving for where?”
“Italy. Switzerland. Wherever it’s most likely that we’ll find Clea Balsamo, alive or dead.”
“We can’t just leave London. The Ancient will squat kittens. He probably wouldn’t even approve of what we’re doing here, and this is just breakfast at a café. He explicitly stated he wanted us to keep close to the Sanctum, so that if The Cabal attacks - ”
“And how does it make you feel exactly, swapping one prison for another?”
Eric flinched. Samantha merely smiled, sadly. “Because I’m finding it difficult, personally,” she murmured, her Scandinavian cadence all the more lilting whenever she spoke so softly. “I’m indebted to The Ancient for releasing me from Rosewell, but ultimately the Sanctum’s just another four walls closing in around me. I… crave freedom. Open air. Even if only for a short while. And, besides, it’s not as if the Sanctum is the source of our abilities. It’s the artefacts.” She patted the hilt of her sword, just as Eric’s hand went involuntarily to the crucifix on the silver chain about his neck. “The four of us together tamed the beast, Shuma-Gorath. If The Cabal choose to wage battle against us while abroad, are we not powerful enough together to stand firm against them?”
Stefan pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Well… I guess it’s a plan. But Eric’s right. The old fart’s going to have a lot to say when he finds out we’re planning to go and hop on a plane for the continent.”
Samantha smiled sweetly. “Ah,” she said. “See, now, I wasn’t thinking about a plane…”
# # # # # # # # # # #
“---not in right now, but if you leave a message after the tone I’ll---”
“Fuck.”
The man at the window sighed, then tossed his cell phone onto the seat cushion of the black leather sofa beside him. Outside, the firmament above the East London skyline was predominantly blue, daubed with a haze of cloud rising on the distant horizon. Sun gleamed on rooftops and reflected in the homogeneous glass rows of office blocks and tenements. The air was warm. It was going to be a fine morning. In many ways it had already been a fine morning. So why, then, was Jacques Roussel feeling so restless…?
“Come back to bed,” a woman’s voice murmured from across the room. Jacques turned, smiling.
He was tall and lean, stubbled, with an unruly mop of gold-russet hair. He wore glasses, with sharp, green eyes beyond. That was all he wore. His naked body was sculpted in the sunlight, most notable the crown of his shoulders and arch of his back, which was covered in a fine amber hair, and the ridges of muscle that lined his abdomen and upper thighs. Before him, curled up in his bed, was a handsome woman. Japanese, slender and elegant, with shoulder-length hair like black syrup and an impish smile. Perhaps younger than him, but oriental women often appeared youthful. Her name was Usagi.
Jacques’ smile grew. A fine morning, had he called it? More like wonderful.
“It’s getting late,” he said, with genuine regret. His voice was husky not only with a French accent but also due to lack of sleep and a desperate need for something to drink. The previous night’s exertions had been… thirsty work. “I want breakfast,” he said. “I’m hungry.”
“Then eat me.”
Usagi pulled aside the bed sheets with a delicate hand, exposing herself, then spread her legs. She dipped her fingers down to her sex. Her eyes were very dark. Jacques’ breath caught in his throat. Usagi grinned, and chuckled. Then, abruptly, she froze.
“Wait a minute. Fuck! How late?”
Jacques glanced down at his wrist but of course there was no watch. He poked his head though an archway in the wall to scan a clock in his apartment’s small kitchen. “Quarter to eleven,” he murmured. “Why, do you need to - ”
“Oh God, I’ve got to be across town by midday!” Usagi slipped from the bed and began darting around the room on bare feet, scooping up items of clothing from where they’d been strewn hours before. “I’m supposed to be meeting my mum in Piccadilly. Shopping for Azami’s wedding, remember? Christ, where are my fucking knickers…?”
Jacques shook his head, a little dazed. Usagi was often like this. Not ditzy, exactly - she was far too clever and clued-up for that - but her time management was appalling. Even if they hadn’t been rutting like animals she would have subconsciously found some other way to be late for her appointment. They’d been seeing each other for three months now, and he still wasn’t accustomed to her incredible energy. He hoped he’d never get used to it. She was wonderful, beautiful, special. He adored her.
“I get first shower!” she called out as she skipped toward the bathroom. “Who were you trying to reach on the phone anyway? Your cousin again?”
Jacques’ smile faltered. Usagi closed the door without waiting for an answer, but, given the chance, he would have answered her question in the affirmative. It was his cousin’s answering machine message, for the fourth time in as many days. He was beginning to get worried now. It wasn’t like her to -
“Vârcolac.”
The word was spoken in foreign tongue and thick voice. It sounded just inches away from his ear. Jacques whirled, almost jumping out of his skin, then staggered backwards as he found himself face-to-face with a stranger in his apartment. A tall, rakish man, with black hair and dusky skin, and eyes as black as sequins. He was standing by the window, a crooked silhouette. One hand was outstretched, palm open and facing upward. In the center of that palm there was a singular flicker of blue-black flame.
“Who the fuck?” Jacques spluttered. “How…? What are you - ”
He faltered as he saw the door to his apartment standing ajar. He couldn’t remember locking it last night, he and Usagi had been rather tipsy and all over each other when they’d returned home from a party. But, even so, this was a respectable district of the city. Some tramp shouldn’t just have been able to -
“Your inner beast has been caged for generations,” whispered Karloff Amadeus Mordo. “Allow me to set loose the chains…”
And then he reached forward and pressed his burning hand to the other man’s bare chest, branding the flesh just above the heart - and although Jacques threw back his head and his jaw snapped wide in a rictus of agony, not a single sound escaped his lips. Not as his skin blistered, or then as his bones began to twist and crack and stretch, or as his muscles began to swell and pop, or as his flesh began to erupt with fresh growth of hair, spilling his blood in thousands of tiny rivulets along his arms and back and legs.
The transformation took mere minutes. A change to one individual’s entire physiological structure, stripping away all that was the man and replacing it - improving it - with the quivering, rampant husk of some utterly inhuman fiend.
And then, when it was done, that terrible silence persisted. When Usagi emerged from the bathroom once more, dressed now in her underwear and black half-skirt and buttoning up an ivory silk blouse, she instantly noticed the unnatural stillness and her step slowed. She called her lover’s name, once then twice. The apartment was small, the best a man even of Jacques’ healthy salary could afford in this part of London. Had he left without her? Usagi scowled. Surely he couldn’t have been that hungry…
It was then she caught the scent of the desecration that had occurred, flaring in her nostrils and at the back of her throat, making her gag. And when she circled the bed and saw the steaming pile of blood and sloughed flesh, her eyes flew wide and bright, and she drew in breath to scream. She never got the chance. In that moment a long limb flashed out from beneath the bed and an enormous claw closed about her right ankle. It yanked her down so fiercely that she instantly suffered compound fractures to her lower leg and knee, the splintered bones stabbing out through her skin like porcupine quills. She hit the floor with a crunch, her face ashen, her eyes rolling up into the back of her head. Another claw closed around her left ankle and pulled her legs apart like a wishbone, dislocating her pelvic girdle.
Red eyes loomed in the dark beneath the bed, and thick glots of saliva drooled from a maw of hooked teeth. What was left of Jacques Roussel’s brain remembered his beloved girlfriend in that final moment, her lying back upon white linens with her legs spread. Eat me. Eat me.
And so… he did.
The beast’s first bite ripped through his victim’s groin, upper thighs and stomach, all the way up to the cavern of her ribs, spraying blood and intestines. And then what was left of her was sucked forward and vanished beneath the bed, whereupon there were only wet, cracking sounds of succulent devouring. Outside the door of the apartment, Mordo slid his hands back into his black leather gloves and then walked away down the corridor. He knew that the Vârcolac - the werewolf - would follow on when its hunger had been temporarily sated.
Two down, two to go. The Order of the Damned was taking shape.
# # # # # # # # # # #
In Greenwich, a southeast borough of London on the South Bank of the Thames, there is Greenwich Park, home of the renowned Royal Observatory. Two hundred yards from the Observatory there is a far less eminent building, a dark and crooked edifice referred to by those few who are aware of its existence as the Sanctum Sanctorum. The Sanctum is disguised from public perception by a similar illusion to that which Stefan Strang - Doctor Strange - had used to hide himself and his companions at the Wardour Street café. If anyone were to look in the direction of the building and concentrate then they’d see… something. But they don’t. The illusion works upon the basis of a subtle psychic suggestion not to look.
This is probably a good thing. The Sanctum Sanctorum, when perceived, resembles a nightmarish amalgam of the witch’s gingerbread cottage from the Brothers Grimm fairytale Hansel and Gretel and a Victorian asylum. And that’s just on the outside. Inside… well, inside is another matter entirely.
The four Defenders of the world stood at the end of a wide dining hall before a gigantic door. The door was painted in various dark shades of red, applied in vertical streaks so that it was redolent of the seepage of dried blood. The door hadn’t been red the day before. Nor had it been twelve feet high and six feet wide, or exuding a nigh intoxicating odor of wild orchids as it did now. Strange sighed and raised an eyebrow.
“You know,” he muttered, “I really fucking hate this place.”
Patsy Walker - Hellcat - purred in agreement. “This morning I woke up to find that my room was circular. It’d been a perfect square when I fell asleep. And when I stepped outside my door I caught the corridor in the process of changing direction and gradient. It made a sound like it was embarrassed. I swear, it’s like Hogwarts filtered through the minds of Salvador Dali and Charles Manson.”
Eric Brooks - Blade - frowned. “What’s Hogwarts?”
“They don’t allow Rowling in prison? I always said you convict types had it easy…”
Samantha Parrington - Valkyrie - drew her mystic sword, Dragonfang, from its belted sheath at her waist and extended the impossibly slight blade towards the door. The point hissed and sparked where it came into contact with the red wood. “I no longer see any kind of conventional handle,” she murmured, aware of the others regarding her questioningly, “so I can only hope this is sufficient.”
Momentarily, Dragonfang began to glow with an inner light. Each of the others possessed an artefact that reacted in similar vein: Strange’s gloves, Hellcat’s ring, Blade’s crucifix. And as all four began to pulse in harmony so the enormous door exhaled a noisy crunch of a bolt being drawn back somewhere high above, and then, slowly, began to open. Considering the aforementioned changes in their current surroundings none of them really knew what to expect beyond the threshold, but the view revealed was familiar: blackness, darkness, the seething of inky shadows, at once claustrophobic yet as wide and infinite an expanse as the depths of a far-flung, starless galaxy. The Void. And, drifting in lazy circles at a distance that was impossible to gauge, there was the Guardian of this realm - the mass of green tentacles and baleful eyes and hungry teeth, all bound in a multitude of shimmering ruby rings, that was the otherworldly entity named Shuma-Gorath.
Shuma-Gorath stared across the abyss in cold silence.
It hated them. Despised them more than it had ever hated any living thing in the countless eons of existence. It wanted to butcher them, feast upon them, annihilate them. Especially the smug-looking bastard in the gloves who had conjured those crimson shackles of arcane power that presently held it leashed like a dog…
Strange paled. “Okay,” he croaked, “is this really something we want to go through with? Because, suddenly, I’m wondering if - ”
“You wish to fully abandon the woman you profess to love?” Valkyrie whispered. There was still a lilt of accent to her voice but there was a subtle inflection in her speech whenever she affected her change from introverted young girl to warrior. Strange grimaced.
“You can do this?” Blade asked, his eyes narrowed to slits as he glared out into the gulf. “You can guide us from one location on Earth to another without getting us lost? Because I do not want to be cast adrift out there…”
Strange shrugged. “It’s my first time. Who can say? Apart from the old man. Who, it bears repeating, is going to be totally pissed when he finds out we’ve done this without consulting him.”
“If we’re quick enough maybe he won’t even realize we’ve gone,” Hellcat said. “So. Lead on, Doctor.”
Strange took a deep breath.
He thought of Clea. He forced himself to think only of Clea. And it almost worked.
Unfortunately he just couldn’t rid himself of that nagging splinter of a thought at the back of his mind that they were all going to regret this…
# # # # # # # # # # #
In the past twenty-four hours Karloff Mordo had visited Glasgow, Scotland and London, England. The latter location had unsettled him, not because of any proximity to those whom The Cabal had decreed to be his adversaries - The Ancient and his Defenders, in their Greenwich sanctuary - but because this was where he had lived with his family not so long ago. His wife and his daughters, six-year-old twins, had meant everything to him. Everything. But a curse inflicted of ancestry had stolen them from him, as he had butchered them in their sleep at the request of his ancient, evil masters.
Now, walking the streets of London was akin to striding the shaded avenues of a cemetery where each and every grave lay exposed, and fetid cadavers twitched and laughed and fornicated in their little nests of worms and filth. Mordo thought that he had lost his mind the night he had bled and dismembered his children, but apparently some tiny shred of it persisted, delivering him constant pulses of pain. Yet there was no time for lament. He was glad to depart London and travel on to Ireland. To Dublin.
To recruit the third of the four.
He traced his new quarry not only through the mystic divination of the flames of the Faltine in his possession but also by tracking the creature’s spoor. In popular mythology the vampire - or vampyr, or nosferatu, whatever the parlance of the region - was often glamorized, even romanticized, but the truth was far less palatable. They did not drink blood with elegance but with hysterical cruelty and violence, sucking veins dry and digesting the succulence of the flesh, and when done they excreted a black, brackish waste. They were animals, sophisticatedly evolved in their own fashion but animals nonetheless. Under the guidance of their lord, Varnae, these beasts were well appraised of the need to remain clandestine when abroad in the human realm, even during the times of feasting. A solitary vampire, however - one turned by chance rather than design - would in contrast be unaccustomed to remaining inconspicuous. Such was the case now.
In recent days the Irish media had divided a fair proportion of its coverage between two stories: a breakout at Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison and a bloody murder spree that had erupted along the north bank of the River Liffey, concentrated on a handful of residential districts of the city’s Northside. To date no one was making an attempt to link the two affairs, at least no one of any national importance. Mordo, of course, knew otherwise.
Mordo chose the district of Fairview to make himself accessible, strolling through the local park some time after midnight. He was aware of being observed almost immediately after arrival, and then being followed. He could feel eyes upon him in the darkness. Red eyes. He came to stand in the shadow of an oak, as tall and straight and expressionless, perhaps, as the body of the grand old tree itself.
“Do you appreciate the irony of your location?” he murmured, knowing his voice would carry to the creature lurking in the black no more than twenty feet distant. “The novelist Bram Stoker was a celebrated resident of a street near here, The Crescent. I believe there exists a museum dedicated to him in this vicinity…”
“Why the bollocks do you think I came here?” a feathery, filthy voice hissed from the night. “For all the fucking good it did me.”
Mordo turned. Red eyes loomed in the night like hot coals. Round, scarlet, no pupils. Rasping breath, the scratching of claws. Mordo could see no ghastly white flesh or shining stakes of teeth but he knew they were present. Desperate to puncture his flesh, to shred him, to feast. “Name yourself,” he said.
“You don’t know? I thought you… ah, you fucker, who - ”
“Name yourself!” the man in black roared, suddenly baring his own teeth. “Third disciple of the Faltine, you answer to Mordo!”
For a moment there was silence from the darkness. Then, the vampire spoke once more. Quietly now. Reverently.
“Frost,” it said. “Deacon Frost.”
Mordo breathed deeply. He removed one of his gloves and held out his hand, palm upwards. A blue-black flame flickered into light. And, as Frost finally advanced, so Mordo’s mind turned from this, the third of the four, to the individual who would be his fourth recruit.
A woman. Far from here, in Lausanne, Switzerland. A château on the shore of Lake Geneva. A woman who, in his mind’s eye, was currently isolated from the world at large and was awash with despair as the misery of her existence closed in about her, forgotten and abandoned. One might consider such a reality to be the worst that life had to offer. But one would be wrong. For Clea Balsamo, life was about to be immersed in a horror more potent than anything she could ever have imagined…
next issue: The Defenders arrive in Switzerland, not knowing if Clea Balsamo is dead or alive. But the terrifying truth is that she may well have become something in-between… and that, on this wild night, Mordo’s Order of the Damned are out for blood!
If you’d like to give feedback on this series, positive or critical, please don’t hesitate to drop a line to [email protected]
For those interested, a list of my fanfiction can be found at http://meriadesfiction.livejournal.com
Thanks for reading!
- Meriades Rai
Details, details. None of it mattered. To Karloff Mordo, the man on the other side of the desk was just another sack of bone and flesh… and blood.
“Now listen,” Camden sighed, standing up wearily from his chair. “I don’t think you’re hearing me. This is a restricted area. You shouldn’t even be here, in front of me, let alone requesting access to the morgue, not without all the official paperwork. So, whoever you are and whatever you want, I reckon you should just - ”
Mordo withdrew the copper sickle from his overcoat. The blade, curved in a delicate three-quarter circle, glowed in the harsh light of the Coroner’s Office like a moon frozen in mid-eclipse. Camden paled. He took a step backwards, hand reaching to steady himself against the edge of the desk.
“Mother of fuck,” he whispered. “Fuck! Sweet Jesus Chr - ”
Mordo swung the sickle and cleaved through the Technician’s neck a half-inch above the shoulder, severing tendons, trachea and spinal cord with one blow. The air misted with blood and fluid. The upper torso bucked, arms flapping uselessly. Arteries gushed. The head smacked against a wall like a misshapen basketball and then landed on the table, wet and heavy. Mordo attended the body as it slid and fell, ignoring the blood that lashed his clothes and boots. He was dressed in black, including gloves. The Technician’s corpse was clad in a long coat, white before all the haemorrhaging, now scarlet. Mordo collected a keycard from an inside pocket. He then grasped the severed head by the hair and took it with him as he stepped around the desk and used the keycard to open the door to the morgue.
The morgue was lit pale blue with fluorescents and was bitterly chill. The air smelled of vanilla and Phenol, and cold steel, but with the lingering odour of decomposition beneath. Mordo strode down a short corridor, the head in his hand leaking a drizzle of blood on the floor, then passed through another door into the main chamber. This new room was large, with three slabs - one laden with white sheets to be laundered, computer printouts, clipboards and document files - and one wall dominated by ranks of cadaver drawers. Mordo checked the paperwork on the slab, one clipboard in particular, then matched the name he was searching for with the number of the appropriate drawer. He pulled it open, revealing the corpse contained inside.
Male, heavy-set, with limp black hair now as waxen as his dead flesh and a face that had been strong and brooding in life but which was now sunken and ghastly in the icy light. The name on the clipboard was that of one Anthony Ludgate, a Doctor from the nearby Rosewell Institute, recently murdered. Details. Again, who the man had been did not matter to Mordo; he was concerned only in what he represented.
Using the curved point of the sickle as surely as a scalpel Mordo then set to work, silently, methodically. He sliced off Ludgate’s face, carving a steady edge beneath the hairline and along either temple, then down beneath the jut of the jaw. He peeled away the flesh, dry as parchment rather than moist as when alive, with delicate precision. Then he repeated this operation with the face of Camden Druid. And, when he held the wet grist of that face in his gloved hands like a vinyl mask, he transferred it to Ludgate’s bloodless skull and meticulously attached it in place with a collection of black pins from a tin in his coat pocket. Each time the point of a pin pierced flesh it hissed, as if hot. Indeed, as Mordo worked the leather of his gloves began to scorch. But he didn’t falter.
Finally, when he was done, he stepped back.
“By the unholy command of the Dread Dormammu,” he intoned, “I brand thee with the mark of the Faltine. Rise now, first of the Order of the Damned.”
For a minute or two there was nothing, save for the hissing and the spitting of the burning pins, melding two vintages of dead flesh. But then, as decreed, so Karloff Mordo’s ghoul did stir, and then - slowly, stiffly - did rise from its narrow metal coffin. And, wickedly, its new mouth stretched into a scarlet grin.
“A fresh face,” the fiend hissed, its voice a tangle of rot and black fluid. “Such a generous gift.”
Dead eyes rolled in their sockets, the bloodied flesh here still knitting with old bone. Mordo stared on, impassive. “Name yourself,” he murmured.
The fiend’s grin shone bright in the cold fluorescent light. “A disciple of the Faltine,” it whispered. “And you may call me… Druid.”
MARVEL 2000 PRESENTS
"PREMEDITATION"
Written by Meriades Rai
“Bollocks.”
Stefan Strang hurled his cell phone to the floor, causing the casing to shatter, then sat back in his chair with his arms folded and his bottom lip peaked. He looked about ten years old. The other three individuals occupying the booth each glanced across at their pouting companion. Seated immediate beside Stefan, an attractive woman with a cherrywood-red bob and amused green eyes edged with thick mascara sipped at her cup of tea. “I take it,” she purred, “that your lady friend has no wish to speak to you…?”
“More likely she’s not allowed to.”
The four of them were sitting in a greasy spoon café on Wardour Street, taking breakfast and tea. The woman with the red hair was Patsy Walker. The heavy-set black man munching on a cheese and bacon bagel opposite her was Eric Brooks. Alongside Eric, opposite Stefan, was the youngest of the group, a waif of a girl with a platinum blonde fringe that swept her eyes. Her name was Samantha Parrington, and she was currently shovelling heaps of fried egg, tomato and mushroom into her mouth as if she didn’t know where her next meal was coming from. They had each recently adopted new names to go with their collective new direction in life - Hellcat, Blade, Valkyrie and, most reluctantly, Doctor Strange - but on this morning, having emerged from the claustrophobic atmosphere of their Sanctum Sanctorum in Greenwich, there seemed to be a communal need to feel normal again, if only for a brief time.
Of course, all things considered, this was all rather an illusion… quite literally.
The café was busy, but not one of the quartet’s fellow patrons glanced in their direction at Stefan’s noisy display of petulance. Nor was anyone curious as to the decidedly odd garb favoured by the four of them, Stefan’s gold and silver gloves and Samantha’s cloak and scabbard in particular. And no one recognised the crust of scar on Eric’s face that might have exposed him as the convict recently escaped from a prison in Dublin, whose likeness had been prominent on television and in newspapers these past few days; nor did anyone recognise Samantha under similar circumstances, as her countenance had also become rather infamous since an incident in a Glasgow mental health institution earlier that week where a man had been murdered.
With all this in mind it would have been foolhardy for the companions to venture out in public without the safeguard of a masking enchantment, courtesy of Stefan and his runic gloves. The spell had thus far proved perfectly effectual, disguising not only their appearances but also their words and deeds, cocooning them in an illusory protective bubble. It would, therefore, have been churlish for any one of them to grumble about their lot in such a situation. But in truth that morning’s outing, whilst welcome, had also served to remind them just how their lives had been utterly transfigured since being assembled by the enigmatic old man known as The Ancient… and how, no matter what they did, they were presently as far removed from these routine human comforts all around them as it was possible to be.
Patsy leaned in towards Stefan. “Tell us about her, this… what was her name?”
“Clea. Clea Balsamo. I met her while on a skiing trip in St. Moritz,” Stefan said. “I thought she was a complete nutcase at first. All that New Age bullshit: crystals, tarot cards, channelling whalesong, whatthefuckever. But she was gorgeous, so of course I ended up speaking to her in the bar one night.”
“Of course,” Patsy murmured, wryly. If Stefan picked up on her tone he ignored it.
“I found out that she was interesting, intelligent. Certainly not a kook. But she was also a trophy wife for some Italian corporation suit, Giuseppe Balsamo. She was twenty-four now, seventeen when she married him. He basically ignored her, except when he came back from his international business trips and wanted to fuck. Otherwise he’d just leave her to her own devices and pay off her credit cards at the end of every month. Oh, and every once in a while he’d get drunk and beat the living crap out of her.”
“Charming.”
“Yeah.” Stefan stared into the mug of coffee he’d been nursing since finished his breakfast and which was now stone cold. “Anyway, I fell for her in a big way. We started to see each other, as friends at first but then as lovers pretty quickly. We’d meet up all over Europe, but mostly at a château in Lausanne that her husband had given her as a gift on her twenty-first birthday but then forgotten about. The relationship had been going on for about four months before Clea told me that she’d made a discovery about Giuseppe. Turns out he was involved in some nasty underworld shit. Not just drugs and prostitution but also sex slavery and trafficking, often kids. Clea said she’d found some DVDs the week before and looked through a couple. Giuseppe was on them, one with some girl who couldn’t have been more than ten years old… then another where he and another man were whipping a screaming woman to death with chains.”
Stefan’s companions were suddenly all looking on in icy silence. Patsy wasn’t smiling any longer. Eric’s eyes were black as coal pits. Samantha shivered and drew her midnight blue cloak tight about her shoulders.
“You helped her get away from him, right?” Patsy asked, softly. “I mean, you didn’t just…”
Stefan flushed a little. “I tried. Oh, come on, don’t look at me like that, of course I fucking tried. I couldn’t stop thinking about what could happen to her, what he’d do to her, if he found out about us.”
“Or what he’d do to you,” Eric interjected.
Stefan buried his face in his hands. “Fuck. It was about six weeks after that when I had my accident. My cell rang and it was Clea’s number, but when I answered it was his voice. He told me he knew everything, and that Clea was going to pay the price. That’s when I ploughed into a car coming the other way. Ended up in hospital, woke up to find I’d lost my… my…”
He pulled his hands away from his eyes, sighing. Inside the golden gloves those hands were real enough, but were he to remove the gloves then all that would be left was a pair of bandaged stumps, the result of the amputation he’d incurred following the accident.
“This is the fifth time I’ve tried to get in contact with her since leaving Germany,” Stefan murmured. “Just the same message on her cell every time.”
“Do you think she’s dead?” Samantha asked. “That her husband killed her?”
Stefan grimaced. The blonde girl’s manner was, as ever, blunt and rather emotionless. It was only when she drew her magical blade, Dragonfang, from its scabbard and her personality altered into that of Valkyrie that she ever displayed any real sentiment, and that was typically a passion for conflict. Stefan hadn’t yet decided which of these separate aspects he felt more comfortable with.
“Honestly? I don’t know,” he muttered. “Maybe I even…”
“Hope that she is dead?” Patsy offered. “Because if she isn’t then there’s a chance that her current situation - and condition - is a lot worse?”
Stefan closed his eyes. Fuck. Fuck.
Samantha forked a quarter of tomato and popped into her mouth. “So,” she said, as she chewed, “when are we leaving?”
The others looked at her. It was Eric who spoke. “Leaving for where?”
“Italy. Switzerland. Wherever it’s most likely that we’ll find Clea Balsamo, alive or dead.”
“We can’t just leave London. The Ancient will squat kittens. He probably wouldn’t even approve of what we’re doing here, and this is just breakfast at a café. He explicitly stated he wanted us to keep close to the Sanctum, so that if The Cabal attacks - ”
“And how does it make you feel exactly, swapping one prison for another?”
Eric flinched. Samantha merely smiled, sadly. “Because I’m finding it difficult, personally,” she murmured, her Scandinavian cadence all the more lilting whenever she spoke so softly. “I’m indebted to The Ancient for releasing me from Rosewell, but ultimately the Sanctum’s just another four walls closing in around me. I… crave freedom. Open air. Even if only for a short while. And, besides, it’s not as if the Sanctum is the source of our abilities. It’s the artefacts.” She patted the hilt of her sword, just as Eric’s hand went involuntarily to the crucifix on the silver chain about his neck. “The four of us together tamed the beast, Shuma-Gorath. If The Cabal choose to wage battle against us while abroad, are we not powerful enough together to stand firm against them?”
Stefan pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Well… I guess it’s a plan. But Eric’s right. The old fart’s going to have a lot to say when he finds out we’re planning to go and hop on a plane for the continent.”
Samantha smiled sweetly. “Ah,” she said. “See, now, I wasn’t thinking about a plane…”
# # # # # # # # # # #
“---not in right now, but if you leave a message after the tone I’ll---”
“Fuck.”
The man at the window sighed, then tossed his cell phone onto the seat cushion of the black leather sofa beside him. Outside, the firmament above the East London skyline was predominantly blue, daubed with a haze of cloud rising on the distant horizon. Sun gleamed on rooftops and reflected in the homogeneous glass rows of office blocks and tenements. The air was warm. It was going to be a fine morning. In many ways it had already been a fine morning. So why, then, was Jacques Roussel feeling so restless…?
“Come back to bed,” a woman’s voice murmured from across the room. Jacques turned, smiling.
He was tall and lean, stubbled, with an unruly mop of gold-russet hair. He wore glasses, with sharp, green eyes beyond. That was all he wore. His naked body was sculpted in the sunlight, most notable the crown of his shoulders and arch of his back, which was covered in a fine amber hair, and the ridges of muscle that lined his abdomen and upper thighs. Before him, curled up in his bed, was a handsome woman. Japanese, slender and elegant, with shoulder-length hair like black syrup and an impish smile. Perhaps younger than him, but oriental women often appeared youthful. Her name was Usagi.
Jacques’ smile grew. A fine morning, had he called it? More like wonderful.
“It’s getting late,” he said, with genuine regret. His voice was husky not only with a French accent but also due to lack of sleep and a desperate need for something to drink. The previous night’s exertions had been… thirsty work. “I want breakfast,” he said. “I’m hungry.”
“Then eat me.”
Usagi pulled aside the bed sheets with a delicate hand, exposing herself, then spread her legs. She dipped her fingers down to her sex. Her eyes were very dark. Jacques’ breath caught in his throat. Usagi grinned, and chuckled. Then, abruptly, she froze.
“Wait a minute. Fuck! How late?”
Jacques glanced down at his wrist but of course there was no watch. He poked his head though an archway in the wall to scan a clock in his apartment’s small kitchen. “Quarter to eleven,” he murmured. “Why, do you need to - ”
“Oh God, I’ve got to be across town by midday!” Usagi slipped from the bed and began darting around the room on bare feet, scooping up items of clothing from where they’d been strewn hours before. “I’m supposed to be meeting my mum in Piccadilly. Shopping for Azami’s wedding, remember? Christ, where are my fucking knickers…?”
Jacques shook his head, a little dazed. Usagi was often like this. Not ditzy, exactly - she was far too clever and clued-up for that - but her time management was appalling. Even if they hadn’t been rutting like animals she would have subconsciously found some other way to be late for her appointment. They’d been seeing each other for three months now, and he still wasn’t accustomed to her incredible energy. He hoped he’d never get used to it. She was wonderful, beautiful, special. He adored her.
“I get first shower!” she called out as she skipped toward the bathroom. “Who were you trying to reach on the phone anyway? Your cousin again?”
Jacques’ smile faltered. Usagi closed the door without waiting for an answer, but, given the chance, he would have answered her question in the affirmative. It was his cousin’s answering machine message, for the fourth time in as many days. He was beginning to get worried now. It wasn’t like her to -
“Vârcolac.”
The word was spoken in foreign tongue and thick voice. It sounded just inches away from his ear. Jacques whirled, almost jumping out of his skin, then staggered backwards as he found himself face-to-face with a stranger in his apartment. A tall, rakish man, with black hair and dusky skin, and eyes as black as sequins. He was standing by the window, a crooked silhouette. One hand was outstretched, palm open and facing upward. In the center of that palm there was a singular flicker of blue-black flame.
“Who the fuck?” Jacques spluttered. “How…? What are you - ”
He faltered as he saw the door to his apartment standing ajar. He couldn’t remember locking it last night, he and Usagi had been rather tipsy and all over each other when they’d returned home from a party. But, even so, this was a respectable district of the city. Some tramp shouldn’t just have been able to -
“Your inner beast has been caged for generations,” whispered Karloff Amadeus Mordo. “Allow me to set loose the chains…”
And then he reached forward and pressed his burning hand to the other man’s bare chest, branding the flesh just above the heart - and although Jacques threw back his head and his jaw snapped wide in a rictus of agony, not a single sound escaped his lips. Not as his skin blistered, or then as his bones began to twist and crack and stretch, or as his muscles began to swell and pop, or as his flesh began to erupt with fresh growth of hair, spilling his blood in thousands of tiny rivulets along his arms and back and legs.
The transformation took mere minutes. A change to one individual’s entire physiological structure, stripping away all that was the man and replacing it - improving it - with the quivering, rampant husk of some utterly inhuman fiend.
And then, when it was done, that terrible silence persisted. When Usagi emerged from the bathroom once more, dressed now in her underwear and black half-skirt and buttoning up an ivory silk blouse, she instantly noticed the unnatural stillness and her step slowed. She called her lover’s name, once then twice. The apartment was small, the best a man even of Jacques’ healthy salary could afford in this part of London. Had he left without her? Usagi scowled. Surely he couldn’t have been that hungry…
It was then she caught the scent of the desecration that had occurred, flaring in her nostrils and at the back of her throat, making her gag. And when she circled the bed and saw the steaming pile of blood and sloughed flesh, her eyes flew wide and bright, and she drew in breath to scream. She never got the chance. In that moment a long limb flashed out from beneath the bed and an enormous claw closed about her right ankle. It yanked her down so fiercely that she instantly suffered compound fractures to her lower leg and knee, the splintered bones stabbing out through her skin like porcupine quills. She hit the floor with a crunch, her face ashen, her eyes rolling up into the back of her head. Another claw closed around her left ankle and pulled her legs apart like a wishbone, dislocating her pelvic girdle.
Red eyes loomed in the dark beneath the bed, and thick glots of saliva drooled from a maw of hooked teeth. What was left of Jacques Roussel’s brain remembered his beloved girlfriend in that final moment, her lying back upon white linens with her legs spread. Eat me. Eat me.
And so… he did.
The beast’s first bite ripped through his victim’s groin, upper thighs and stomach, all the way up to the cavern of her ribs, spraying blood and intestines. And then what was left of her was sucked forward and vanished beneath the bed, whereupon there were only wet, cracking sounds of succulent devouring. Outside the door of the apartment, Mordo slid his hands back into his black leather gloves and then walked away down the corridor. He knew that the Vârcolac - the werewolf - would follow on when its hunger had been temporarily sated.
Two down, two to go. The Order of the Damned was taking shape.
# # # # # # # # # # #
In Greenwich, a southeast borough of London on the South Bank of the Thames, there is Greenwich Park, home of the renowned Royal Observatory. Two hundred yards from the Observatory there is a far less eminent building, a dark and crooked edifice referred to by those few who are aware of its existence as the Sanctum Sanctorum. The Sanctum is disguised from public perception by a similar illusion to that which Stefan Strang - Doctor Strange - had used to hide himself and his companions at the Wardour Street café. If anyone were to look in the direction of the building and concentrate then they’d see… something. But they don’t. The illusion works upon the basis of a subtle psychic suggestion not to look.
This is probably a good thing. The Sanctum Sanctorum, when perceived, resembles a nightmarish amalgam of the witch’s gingerbread cottage from the Brothers Grimm fairytale Hansel and Gretel and a Victorian asylum. And that’s just on the outside. Inside… well, inside is another matter entirely.
The four Defenders of the world stood at the end of a wide dining hall before a gigantic door. The door was painted in various dark shades of red, applied in vertical streaks so that it was redolent of the seepage of dried blood. The door hadn’t been red the day before. Nor had it been twelve feet high and six feet wide, or exuding a nigh intoxicating odor of wild orchids as it did now. Strange sighed and raised an eyebrow.
“You know,” he muttered, “I really fucking hate this place.”
Patsy Walker - Hellcat - purred in agreement. “This morning I woke up to find that my room was circular. It’d been a perfect square when I fell asleep. And when I stepped outside my door I caught the corridor in the process of changing direction and gradient. It made a sound like it was embarrassed. I swear, it’s like Hogwarts filtered through the minds of Salvador Dali and Charles Manson.”
Eric Brooks - Blade - frowned. “What’s Hogwarts?”
“They don’t allow Rowling in prison? I always said you convict types had it easy…”
Samantha Parrington - Valkyrie - drew her mystic sword, Dragonfang, from its belted sheath at her waist and extended the impossibly slight blade towards the door. The point hissed and sparked where it came into contact with the red wood. “I no longer see any kind of conventional handle,” she murmured, aware of the others regarding her questioningly, “so I can only hope this is sufficient.”
Momentarily, Dragonfang began to glow with an inner light. Each of the others possessed an artefact that reacted in similar vein: Strange’s gloves, Hellcat’s ring, Blade’s crucifix. And as all four began to pulse in harmony so the enormous door exhaled a noisy crunch of a bolt being drawn back somewhere high above, and then, slowly, began to open. Considering the aforementioned changes in their current surroundings none of them really knew what to expect beyond the threshold, but the view revealed was familiar: blackness, darkness, the seething of inky shadows, at once claustrophobic yet as wide and infinite an expanse as the depths of a far-flung, starless galaxy. The Void. And, drifting in lazy circles at a distance that was impossible to gauge, there was the Guardian of this realm - the mass of green tentacles and baleful eyes and hungry teeth, all bound in a multitude of shimmering ruby rings, that was the otherworldly entity named Shuma-Gorath.
Shuma-Gorath stared across the abyss in cold silence.
It hated them. Despised them more than it had ever hated any living thing in the countless eons of existence. It wanted to butcher them, feast upon them, annihilate them. Especially the smug-looking bastard in the gloves who had conjured those crimson shackles of arcane power that presently held it leashed like a dog…
Strange paled. “Okay,” he croaked, “is this really something we want to go through with? Because, suddenly, I’m wondering if - ”
“You wish to fully abandon the woman you profess to love?” Valkyrie whispered. There was still a lilt of accent to her voice but there was a subtle inflection in her speech whenever she affected her change from introverted young girl to warrior. Strange grimaced.
“You can do this?” Blade asked, his eyes narrowed to slits as he glared out into the gulf. “You can guide us from one location on Earth to another without getting us lost? Because I do not want to be cast adrift out there…”
Strange shrugged. “It’s my first time. Who can say? Apart from the old man. Who, it bears repeating, is going to be totally pissed when he finds out we’ve done this without consulting him.”
“If we’re quick enough maybe he won’t even realize we’ve gone,” Hellcat said. “So. Lead on, Doctor.”
Strange took a deep breath.
He thought of Clea. He forced himself to think only of Clea. And it almost worked.
Unfortunately he just couldn’t rid himself of that nagging splinter of a thought at the back of his mind that they were all going to regret this…
# # # # # # # # # # #
In the past twenty-four hours Karloff Mordo had visited Glasgow, Scotland and London, England. The latter location had unsettled him, not because of any proximity to those whom The Cabal had decreed to be his adversaries - The Ancient and his Defenders, in their Greenwich sanctuary - but because this was where he had lived with his family not so long ago. His wife and his daughters, six-year-old twins, had meant everything to him. Everything. But a curse inflicted of ancestry had stolen them from him, as he had butchered them in their sleep at the request of his ancient, evil masters.
Now, walking the streets of London was akin to striding the shaded avenues of a cemetery where each and every grave lay exposed, and fetid cadavers twitched and laughed and fornicated in their little nests of worms and filth. Mordo thought that he had lost his mind the night he had bled and dismembered his children, but apparently some tiny shred of it persisted, delivering him constant pulses of pain. Yet there was no time for lament. He was glad to depart London and travel on to Ireland. To Dublin.
To recruit the third of the four.
He traced his new quarry not only through the mystic divination of the flames of the Faltine in his possession but also by tracking the creature’s spoor. In popular mythology the vampire - or vampyr, or nosferatu, whatever the parlance of the region - was often glamorized, even romanticized, but the truth was far less palatable. They did not drink blood with elegance but with hysterical cruelty and violence, sucking veins dry and digesting the succulence of the flesh, and when done they excreted a black, brackish waste. They were animals, sophisticatedly evolved in their own fashion but animals nonetheless. Under the guidance of their lord, Varnae, these beasts were well appraised of the need to remain clandestine when abroad in the human realm, even during the times of feasting. A solitary vampire, however - one turned by chance rather than design - would in contrast be unaccustomed to remaining inconspicuous. Such was the case now.
In recent days the Irish media had divided a fair proportion of its coverage between two stories: a breakout at Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison and a bloody murder spree that had erupted along the north bank of the River Liffey, concentrated on a handful of residential districts of the city’s Northside. To date no one was making an attempt to link the two affairs, at least no one of any national importance. Mordo, of course, knew otherwise.
Mordo chose the district of Fairview to make himself accessible, strolling through the local park some time after midnight. He was aware of being observed almost immediately after arrival, and then being followed. He could feel eyes upon him in the darkness. Red eyes. He came to stand in the shadow of an oak, as tall and straight and expressionless, perhaps, as the body of the grand old tree itself.
“Do you appreciate the irony of your location?” he murmured, knowing his voice would carry to the creature lurking in the black no more than twenty feet distant. “The novelist Bram Stoker was a celebrated resident of a street near here, The Crescent. I believe there exists a museum dedicated to him in this vicinity…”
“Why the bollocks do you think I came here?” a feathery, filthy voice hissed from the night. “For all the fucking good it did me.”
Mordo turned. Red eyes loomed in the night like hot coals. Round, scarlet, no pupils. Rasping breath, the scratching of claws. Mordo could see no ghastly white flesh or shining stakes of teeth but he knew they were present. Desperate to puncture his flesh, to shred him, to feast. “Name yourself,” he said.
“You don’t know? I thought you… ah, you fucker, who - ”
“Name yourself!” the man in black roared, suddenly baring his own teeth. “Third disciple of the Faltine, you answer to Mordo!”
For a moment there was silence from the darkness. Then, the vampire spoke once more. Quietly now. Reverently.
“Frost,” it said. “Deacon Frost.”
Mordo breathed deeply. He removed one of his gloves and held out his hand, palm upwards. A blue-black flame flickered into light. And, as Frost finally advanced, so Mordo’s mind turned from this, the third of the four, to the individual who would be his fourth recruit.
A woman. Far from here, in Lausanne, Switzerland. A château on the shore of Lake Geneva. A woman who, in his mind’s eye, was currently isolated from the world at large and was awash with despair as the misery of her existence closed in about her, forgotten and abandoned. One might consider such a reality to be the worst that life had to offer. But one would be wrong. For Clea Balsamo, life was about to be immersed in a horror more potent than anything she could ever have imagined…
next issue: The Defenders arrive in Switzerland, not knowing if Clea Balsamo is dead or alive. But the terrifying truth is that she may well have become something in-between… and that, on this wild night, Mordo’s Order of the Damned are out for blood!
If you’d like to give feedback on this series, positive or critical, please don’t hesitate to drop a line to [email protected]
For those interested, a list of my fanfiction can be found at http://meriadesfiction.livejournal.com
Thanks for reading!
- Meriades Rai