Back to GatefoldIssue #7 by Meriades Rai
June 2009 |
WHAT’S COME BEFORE
Escaping from his otherdimensional prison, the being known only as The Ancient travels to Earth to recruit four disciples - four Defenders - in his battle against The Cabal, five entities of unimaginable evil who delight in feeding upon the pain and misery of humankind.
The Defenders are: Doctor Stefan Strang, an arrogant surgeon whose hands were amputated at the wrists following a car accident but who can now manipulate magical forces through a pair of mystic gloves; Samantha Parrington, a mentally disturbed girl able to manifest the persona of the warrioress Valkyrie along with her sword Dragonfang, boasting an enchanted blade that can slice through any known matter; Eric Brooks, known as Blade, a convicted murderer now on the run whose hands have been transformed into living weapons; and Patsy Walker, the mysterious Hellcat, possessed of uncanny guile and skill and able to breath the green flames of hellfire, and whose lineage is a matter of some conjecture.
Baron Karloff Mordo, the human henchman of The Cabal, has been charged with gathering his own entourage of evil under the banner of The Order of the Damned - a task which he is close to completing. Clea Balsamo, a young married woman with whom Doctor Strange was having an affair before his accident, is now at the mercy of her cruel and violent husband Giuseppe. Strange and his fellow Defenders have decided to leave their Sanctum in Greenwich, London - against the wishes of The Ancient - to try and ascertain if Clea is still alive, unaware that Mordo is also seeking the poor girl for his own ends.
The Defenders are set to travel to Lausanne, Switzerland via a mystic dimensional portal called The Void. They can’t possibly comprehend the horror of what awaits them…
MARVEL 2000 PRESENTS
"INTERVENTION"
Written by Meriades Rai
When Giuseppe Balsamo discovered that his wife Clea was an adulteress he didn’t kill her outright. He wasn’t that merciful. He instead arranged for her to be detained at the Swiss château he’d bought for her on her twenty-first birthday, the dwelling where she’d been whoring herself for six months with an eminent surgeon named Stefan Strang, decreeing this a fitting location for where her punishment should occur. And for the past three weeks Clea Balsamo had indeed suffered for her sins.
Guiseppe had procured a glass coffin and on that first night in Lausanne, reclining in a leather chair with a decanter of L’Esprit de Courvoisier, he observed dispassionately as two Serbians carried out his instructions. They systematically dislocated each of his wife’s fingers, then her wrists, then her shoulders and then her ankles, before placing her broken, naked body into the coffin; they then slid on the glass lid with its ring of air holes about the perimeter and lowered the casket into an aperture in the stone floor of the château’s rustic wine cellar. The Serbians were paid and departed without word, but Giuseppe lingered to look down upon the woman who had betrayed him, weeping and writhing beneath the glass fascia underfoot. Her despair was absolute. Job done. Satisfied, he himself then left the château and returned to Italy.
Clea was abandoned for ten days. When her husband eventually returned he found her gaunt with starvation, ashen-skinned and delirious - but still alive. He was thankful for this. He didn’t want her to miss the show he’d planned.
Smiling, Giuseppe led a rapier-thin brunette in a leather corset, seamed nylon stockings and six-inch needle heels down into the cellar on the end of a leash attached to a neck collar. The girl was French, no more than eighteen. Drunk on alcohol and debauchery, evidently looking forward to the night’s festivities. Silly child. Blindfolded, the tart was unaware of Clea’s presence directly beneath her when Giuseppe positioned her face-down upon the glass surface of the coffin and proceeded to ravage her with all the hate and lust and rage at his command. The brunette either enjoyed herself or convinced herself that she should. Giuseppe didn’t care. When he was done he released the girl’s blindfold and made her stare into the eyes of the emaciated wretch beneath her, and when she opened her mouth to scream he slid in the blade of a hunting knife and sawed open her throat from the inside.
He wiped away the pooling blood from the coffin lid with the dead girl’s hair, then looked down at Clea with cold, cold eyes.
“That bastard you welcomed inside you is providing difficult to track down,” he said. “A shame. I was hoping he’d witness what had become of you whilst you were still breathing. But I’ll find him. And by the time I’m finished with him he’ll be more than willing to eat what’s left of your flesh from your bones like a hungry dog.”
And then Giuseppe Balsamo had departed a second time. Clea never saw him again.
But now, today, there was another face above her, looking down. Black hair, dark eyes. Nothing in his expression, no concern, no pity, no sense of horror. Not even a flicker of curiosity. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know how long she’d been in the casket. She didn’t know much of anything to be truthful, rendered completely insane from the pain and the deprivation. The man stared awhile, then fitted his fingers under the edge of the lid and lifted it clear. Somewhere deep inside, beyond the fog of her psychosis, Clea might have experienced a pang of hope.
But not for long. This stranger, alas, wasn’t here to save her.
“Buona sera, Signora Balsamo,” the man breathed. “I’ve traveled a long way to meet you. My name is Mordo. And I’ve brought you a gift…”
Mordo held out an ornate box and tipped it, spilling its contents into the coffin. Then, as Clea looked on in wide-eyed incomprehension, the man leaned back and replaced the glass lid above her. If Clea could have moved to stop him then she would, but even despite her dislocated bones her muscles had long since atrophied. She barely felt the fluttering all over her naked skin as the dozen huge, black spiders that the man had introduced to the casket began exploring their new environment. And, of course, she couldn’t scream. Not once one of the creatures crawled into her mouth.
“By the command of the Dread Dormammu, I brand thee with the mark of the Faltine,” Mordo declared, holding out his hand once more, this time palm upward and cradling a flicker of blue flame. “The fourth and final disciple of the Order of the Damned…
And for Clea Balsamo, in her final minutes as a human, there was only a soft, wriggling, biting darkness…
# # # # # # # # # #
“So, is this Italy or Switzerland? Because all these European countries with their lakes and mountains look the same to me…”
The four Defenders were standing at the edge of a wooded outcrop overlooking a wide body of water that stretched left and right as far as the eye could see. It was late evening and the distant shore was sparkling with lights in the gathering darkness. Doctor Strange answered Blade’s question by pointing down to where scores of small boats were moored along a stretch of harbour on the nearside bank, the song of their rigging in the wind drifting like music.
“It’s Switzerland,” he said. “See all those yachts? Each one costs the same as five Ferraris. That’s one of Lake Geneva’s most exclusive private marinas, playground of rich bastards who believe the woes of the world can’t touch them.”
“Like Giuseppe Balsamo?”
“Actually, I was thinking of myself.” Strange looked down at his gloved hands, his eyes cold. “Back in my previous life, obviously. Anyway, there’s another reason I know exactly where we are…”
He turned and gestured in the opposite direction. Through the trees all of them could now see a distinctive building framed against the twilight, turrets stabbing up towards a low moon like the tips of bat wings. Blade pursed his lips and whistled.
“Nice castle,” he murmured. Strange grimaced.
“Just a small château. By Swiss measure it’s no more than a cottage.”
“Lifestyles of the rich and murderous?”
“Pretty much.”
Valkyrie stepped forward, her hand resting casually on the hilt of her enchanted sword, Dragonfang, where it was slotted into the belt around her lean waist. “You think your ladyfriend Clea is here rather than Italy, Doctor?”
“When I led us out into The Void I made sure I wasn’t concentrating on a specific destination,” Strange said, eyes dark as he stared up at the peaks of the château. “I wanted to see if the magic wave we were riding could determine Clea’s location for us.”
Hellcat sniffed. “So, theoretically, we could have ended up in Australia?”
“Or worse.”
“There’s worse than Australia?”
“I’m beginning to believe that anything’s possible. But I’m also beginning to trust the power rather than let myself get freaked out by it.”
Hellcat regarded Strange curiously, her green eyes sharp beneath her cropped, cherry-red fringe. “Well, well. Someone’s starting to grow more confident.”
Doctor Strange met her gaze coolly. “I can feel the magic inside me. Flowing through me. Every day, every hour, it gets more… familiar. Besides, what choice do I have but to start trusting in myself? What choice do any of us have? If we’re going to be the old man’s barricade against the forces of darkness we can’t just sit around looking like a bunch of emo kids cutting up their forearms while they wait for the next My Chemical Romance album.”
Valkyrie frowned. “Emu kids?”
“Emo, not emu. It’s… oh, never mind. Just ask Samantha next time you do your personality-switch thing.”
“Guilt can do wonders to bolster a man’s resolve, can’t it?” Hellcat purred. Strange glared at her.
“Well, I’ve got a lot to feel guilty about, haven’t I?” he snapped. “When I told you all about Clea, I could see the accusation in your faces. I did fail her. I knew what kind of monster she was married to but I didn’t try hard enough to help her get free. Now I don’t know if she’s alive or dead, but any suffering she’s gone through is on my conscience.”
“So you’ve not only grown a pair of magical hands, you’ve grown a magical pair of bollocks to match?”
“Something like that.”
Hellcat grinned. “Well, good. I like this new man-of-action Doctor Strange…”
The four Defenders stared up at the château once more, a heavy silence settling about the wooded grounds that even the ringing of the yachts in the marina couldn’t seem to penetrate. The castle was dark and forbidding. It appeared abandoned. And yet, if Strange’s trust in magic was well-placed, then Clea Balsamo was somewhere inside.
It was time to find out if that presence was in spirit as well as in body.
# # # # # # # # # #
“Please. Please, just listen. You don’t have to do this. I have money. I have more stinking money than you could possibly imagine. I - ”
“When the world broils in blood and hellfire there’ll be no call for material wealth, Signor Balsamo,” murmured Baron Mordo. “Besides, I’ve always been a fair-minded fellow. You were content to inflict unconscionable atrocities upon your poor wife, but baulk at the idea of reciprocation? How very unreasonable of you.”
“But how very much like the man he is,” another voice hissed. A woman’s voice, perhaps, although it was difficult to tell for sure. Clea Balsamo was… not the woman she used to be.
The château cellar was dark save for a solitary lantern illuminating the wall where Giuseppe Balsamo was presently cuffed by black iron manacles and restrained by short lengths of chain connected to rings embedded into the ancient stone. He was naked and bleeding from a number of shallow wounds, as well as from a particularly severe injury to his lower right leg. It was a bite. One of Mordo’s Order of the Damned, the beast formerly known as Jacques Roussel, had been hungry and difficult to restrain since their arrival in Switzerland but eventually Mordo had managed to distract him with a half-dozen unsuspecting tourists hiking the nearby hill trails. Now the beast was hunkered down in the shadows, feasting noisily on still-warm flesh - whilst Balsamo belonged instead to another.
Giuseppe Balsamo was in good condition for a man in his late forties, with a strapping physique and a fine head of hair that remained naturally black as a raven’s wing. He was also handsome, and his eyes hid the cruelty that lurked beyond remarkably well. There was no shame for Clea that she’d been lulled by his allure in the weeks before they’d wed, and afterwards… well, afterwards she’d been regularly reminded what fate would have in store for her if she ever attempted to leave her husband. It had shown much courage, and no little stupidity, for her to embark upon an affair with Stefan Strang. And this was the price she’d paid for that:
The thing that had been Clea Balsamo emerged now from the darkness into the pallid glow of the lantern, moving slowly but sinuously on her newly transformed body and her eyes - her many, many eyes - shining in the half-bright. The sight of her caused her prospective victim to scream like a terrified child.
Giuseppe had returned to the château two hours before, expecting to find his errant wife dead or at least so near death that she was no longer aware of any further torment he could mete out. He’d instead discovered an empty coffin, the glass lid shattered - and, in the minutes that followed, he’d learned that the château had been commandeered by a strange and fearsome band of rogues. Now he was being shown that his wife was one of them.
“Do you know how spiders feed, my love?” Clea whispered, reaching out with one of her legs. “They bite to inject venom, to paralyze, but then to eat they spit up enzymes to dissolve the internal organs of their prey and then suck up the liquefied juices. Sometimes this process can be drawn out to considerable length and can be unspeakably agonizing for the poor insect being slowly digested in this fashion. My only wish is I wasn’t now on such a tight schedule…”
Clea didn’t need to paralyze her husband. He was squirming and yanking so hard at his cuffs that the flesh was peeling away from his wrists in bloodied strips, but he wasn’t going anywhere. Clea allowed herself a moment or two to appreciate his misery, and then disgorged a mist of bright, pungent liquid over his feet. Giuseppe Balsamo was screaming even before the reddening skin began to smoke and blister and his blood leak out from between his melting toes. And that was just the beginning.
Baron Mordo turned away, satisfied but in no hurry to observe such a hideous spectacle. He was a fair man, and a fiend like Balsamo deserved this misery. Regrettably this time of retribution was about to be cut short…
“We have company.”
Mordo glanced up as a light flickered in the darkness, illuminating the frame of a large man stood in an arched doorway. This fellow, once professional psychiatrist Doctor Anthony Ludgate, now preferred to be called Druid. He had been dead for a number of days, but was quite lively considering.
“The disciples of our enemy,” Druid reported. “All four of them.”
Mordo scowled. “Here in the château? Now?”
Druid nodded. Mordo’s scowl deepened.
“Fuck,” he said. But then, slowly, he smiled. “Ah well. It had to happen eventually, didn’t it? And who are we not to welcome the workings of fate…?”
# # # # # # # # # #
Clea was dead. That’s what they were all thinking, although no one seemed inclined to say it, even the characteristically blunt Valkyrie. Doctor Strange knew, however, that the impression of death that permeated the halls of the château was unmistakable; it was soaked into the darkened walls, the floors, the doors, like a plantation house left to rot for half a century on the riverbank of the bayou.
The others were somewhat awed by their unfamiliar surroundings, or at least what they could see in the half-gloom after Strange had conjured a magical light to guide them, but the Doctor himself was gripped by altogether more unpleasant emotions. For him this place was filled with memories: here, the parlor with the open hearth where he and Clea had made love for the first time on a soft rug the colour of fresh snow; there, the kitchen galley where he’d burned eggs the following morning whilst attempting to prepare breakfast in his typically haphazard fashion. The central staircase, the paneled walls with framed pictures by semi-famous artists, the library with the bay windows that gazed out onto beautiful gardens… he recognized it all, but now it was somehow changed. Twisted.
Back in London he’d hoped for another chance, that his fears were unfounded, but his prayers had gone unanswered. Yes, Clea was dead. And Doctor Strange was sure now that they should never have come here.
“Something’s wrong,” Blade said.
Hellcat glanced at him, a sardonic retort on her lips, but the sight of her companion’s somber expression stilled her. That and the way the crucifix suspended about his neck on a silver chain was suddenly glowing. She lifted her hand and saw that the green malachite ring on her finger was smoldering with a similar radiance.
“I can feel it too,” Valkyrie reported. “We’re not alone here.” Her mouth was twitching with a faint smile as she spoke, and as she flexed her sword-arm so Dragonfang’s impossibly thin edge glimmered like a thread of lightning. She alone among them was looking forward to whatever came next - or perhaps that wasn’t quite true. Strange also seemed uncustomarily keen to confront the definite sense of evil that now encroached upon them.
“This was a mistake,” Strange said. As little as twenty-four hours ago he might have followed these words with a declaration that they should turn back immediately, returning to The Ancient’s Sanctum Sanctorum in Greenwich. Now, however, he showed no signs of wishing to retreat. It wasn’t courage. It wasn’t even confidence as Hellcat had suggested earlier. It was rage.
Clea was dead.
Doctor Strange raised both hands, his gloves of gold silk shining bright. His palms were angled towards him so that he could read the shifting runes stitched there. Words and sounds of unearthly origin spilled from his lips, his eyes narrowed to dark slits. This was an ancient incantation, channelled through him from the power of the runes. Loosely translated to modern English, the chant meant:
“Reveal yourselves, you hairy motherfuckers.”
And that’s exactly what happened.
The light that Strange had conjured earlier now both intensified and separated out into twenty or thirty or more gleaming ribbons of brightness that spooled and spiralled into every corner of the enormous reception hall where the four companions currently stood. The shadows were peeled back with a wet hiss, like something alive, and the immediate interior of the château was left revealed - as were those that were lurking in the darkness, observing the advance of their enemies.
Atop the wide flight of stairs directly ahead, at the end of the hall, a seven-and-a-half-foot tall beast with sable and chestnut fur, huge fangs and even larger claws snarled deep in its belly. Its maw was rich with blood but it was still hungry. Always hungry. Jacques Roussel.
On the right flank, a thin man with ghastly white flesh and scarlet eyes with no pupils, his mouth split in a hideous grin and his elongated canines - the only teeth in his black, black mouth - stabbing down over his lower lip. Deacon Frost.
On the left, a dead man, of reanimated corpseflesh and rotting stink. Druid. And then behind the Defenders, cutting off their escape route had they been of a mind, two more figures: a woman with a crooked, mutated body that was now arched about the spine with a massively swollen abdomen and supported on eight spindly legs, and a final man, dressed in black and seemingly normal in appearance compared to those around him but with a terrible darkness in his eyes - in his soul - that also suggested that he was the worst of them all. Clea Balsamo and Baron Karloff Amadeus Mordo.
Werewolf, vampire, zombie, spider-woman, and then the dark master…
“We are the Order of the Damned, the disciples of the Faltine, at the command of the Dread Dormammu,” uttered Mordo. And then he smiled, and doffed an imaginary hat. “I should thank you, Doctor. It was my intention to hunt you the four of you down in your own sanctuary and slaughter you in your beds. By coming to us, however, you have spared us the journey.”
Mordo turned in a circle, arms raised.
“Come now, children,” he said. “Rise up. Rise up…
“And bring me their bloody heads.”
NEXT ISSUE: The Defenders vs. The Order of the Damned to the finish. I’ll try my best to make it all worthwhile…
AUTHOR’S NOTES
Hello?
You know, I’m not even sure that anyone’s going to be reading this, and if they aren’t then the fault’s all mine. It’s been about a year since the last issue of this series, and that’s just daft. It took me a day or so of re-reading the previous issues to remember what the hell I was supposed to be writing about, and if that’s what it’s like for me then it must be worse for any potential audience.
Still, I am adamant that I’m going to finish off my commitment here, and hopefully it won’t be long before the next issue hits. If you are still reading faithfully, then: Thank you, I’m sorry, and I hope you’re enjoying the series.
- Meriades Rai
Escaping from his otherdimensional prison, the being known only as The Ancient travels to Earth to recruit four disciples - four Defenders - in his battle against The Cabal, five entities of unimaginable evil who delight in feeding upon the pain and misery of humankind.
The Defenders are: Doctor Stefan Strang, an arrogant surgeon whose hands were amputated at the wrists following a car accident but who can now manipulate magical forces through a pair of mystic gloves; Samantha Parrington, a mentally disturbed girl able to manifest the persona of the warrioress Valkyrie along with her sword Dragonfang, boasting an enchanted blade that can slice through any known matter; Eric Brooks, known as Blade, a convicted murderer now on the run whose hands have been transformed into living weapons; and Patsy Walker, the mysterious Hellcat, possessed of uncanny guile and skill and able to breath the green flames of hellfire, and whose lineage is a matter of some conjecture.
Baron Karloff Mordo, the human henchman of The Cabal, has been charged with gathering his own entourage of evil under the banner of The Order of the Damned - a task which he is close to completing. Clea Balsamo, a young married woman with whom Doctor Strange was having an affair before his accident, is now at the mercy of her cruel and violent husband Giuseppe. Strange and his fellow Defenders have decided to leave their Sanctum in Greenwich, London - against the wishes of The Ancient - to try and ascertain if Clea is still alive, unaware that Mordo is also seeking the poor girl for his own ends.
The Defenders are set to travel to Lausanne, Switzerland via a mystic dimensional portal called The Void. They can’t possibly comprehend the horror of what awaits them…
MARVEL 2000 PRESENTS
"INTERVENTION"
Written by Meriades Rai
When Giuseppe Balsamo discovered that his wife Clea was an adulteress he didn’t kill her outright. He wasn’t that merciful. He instead arranged for her to be detained at the Swiss château he’d bought for her on her twenty-first birthday, the dwelling where she’d been whoring herself for six months with an eminent surgeon named Stefan Strang, decreeing this a fitting location for where her punishment should occur. And for the past three weeks Clea Balsamo had indeed suffered for her sins.
Guiseppe had procured a glass coffin and on that first night in Lausanne, reclining in a leather chair with a decanter of L’Esprit de Courvoisier, he observed dispassionately as two Serbians carried out his instructions. They systematically dislocated each of his wife’s fingers, then her wrists, then her shoulders and then her ankles, before placing her broken, naked body into the coffin; they then slid on the glass lid with its ring of air holes about the perimeter and lowered the casket into an aperture in the stone floor of the château’s rustic wine cellar. The Serbians were paid and departed without word, but Giuseppe lingered to look down upon the woman who had betrayed him, weeping and writhing beneath the glass fascia underfoot. Her despair was absolute. Job done. Satisfied, he himself then left the château and returned to Italy.
Clea was abandoned for ten days. When her husband eventually returned he found her gaunt with starvation, ashen-skinned and delirious - but still alive. He was thankful for this. He didn’t want her to miss the show he’d planned.
Smiling, Giuseppe led a rapier-thin brunette in a leather corset, seamed nylon stockings and six-inch needle heels down into the cellar on the end of a leash attached to a neck collar. The girl was French, no more than eighteen. Drunk on alcohol and debauchery, evidently looking forward to the night’s festivities. Silly child. Blindfolded, the tart was unaware of Clea’s presence directly beneath her when Giuseppe positioned her face-down upon the glass surface of the coffin and proceeded to ravage her with all the hate and lust and rage at his command. The brunette either enjoyed herself or convinced herself that she should. Giuseppe didn’t care. When he was done he released the girl’s blindfold and made her stare into the eyes of the emaciated wretch beneath her, and when she opened her mouth to scream he slid in the blade of a hunting knife and sawed open her throat from the inside.
He wiped away the pooling blood from the coffin lid with the dead girl’s hair, then looked down at Clea with cold, cold eyes.
“That bastard you welcomed inside you is providing difficult to track down,” he said. “A shame. I was hoping he’d witness what had become of you whilst you were still breathing. But I’ll find him. And by the time I’m finished with him he’ll be more than willing to eat what’s left of your flesh from your bones like a hungry dog.”
And then Giuseppe Balsamo had departed a second time. Clea never saw him again.
But now, today, there was another face above her, looking down. Black hair, dark eyes. Nothing in his expression, no concern, no pity, no sense of horror. Not even a flicker of curiosity. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know how long she’d been in the casket. She didn’t know much of anything to be truthful, rendered completely insane from the pain and the deprivation. The man stared awhile, then fitted his fingers under the edge of the lid and lifted it clear. Somewhere deep inside, beyond the fog of her psychosis, Clea might have experienced a pang of hope.
But not for long. This stranger, alas, wasn’t here to save her.
“Buona sera, Signora Balsamo,” the man breathed. “I’ve traveled a long way to meet you. My name is Mordo. And I’ve brought you a gift…”
Mordo held out an ornate box and tipped it, spilling its contents into the coffin. Then, as Clea looked on in wide-eyed incomprehension, the man leaned back and replaced the glass lid above her. If Clea could have moved to stop him then she would, but even despite her dislocated bones her muscles had long since atrophied. She barely felt the fluttering all over her naked skin as the dozen huge, black spiders that the man had introduced to the casket began exploring their new environment. And, of course, she couldn’t scream. Not once one of the creatures crawled into her mouth.
“By the command of the Dread Dormammu, I brand thee with the mark of the Faltine,” Mordo declared, holding out his hand once more, this time palm upward and cradling a flicker of blue flame. “The fourth and final disciple of the Order of the Damned…
And for Clea Balsamo, in her final minutes as a human, there was only a soft, wriggling, biting darkness…
# # # # # # # # # #
“So, is this Italy or Switzerland? Because all these European countries with their lakes and mountains look the same to me…”
The four Defenders were standing at the edge of a wooded outcrop overlooking a wide body of water that stretched left and right as far as the eye could see. It was late evening and the distant shore was sparkling with lights in the gathering darkness. Doctor Strange answered Blade’s question by pointing down to where scores of small boats were moored along a stretch of harbour on the nearside bank, the song of their rigging in the wind drifting like music.
“It’s Switzerland,” he said. “See all those yachts? Each one costs the same as five Ferraris. That’s one of Lake Geneva’s most exclusive private marinas, playground of rich bastards who believe the woes of the world can’t touch them.”
“Like Giuseppe Balsamo?”
“Actually, I was thinking of myself.” Strange looked down at his gloved hands, his eyes cold. “Back in my previous life, obviously. Anyway, there’s another reason I know exactly where we are…”
He turned and gestured in the opposite direction. Through the trees all of them could now see a distinctive building framed against the twilight, turrets stabbing up towards a low moon like the tips of bat wings. Blade pursed his lips and whistled.
“Nice castle,” he murmured. Strange grimaced.
“Just a small château. By Swiss measure it’s no more than a cottage.”
“Lifestyles of the rich and murderous?”
“Pretty much.”
Valkyrie stepped forward, her hand resting casually on the hilt of her enchanted sword, Dragonfang, where it was slotted into the belt around her lean waist. “You think your ladyfriend Clea is here rather than Italy, Doctor?”
“When I led us out into The Void I made sure I wasn’t concentrating on a specific destination,” Strange said, eyes dark as he stared up at the peaks of the château. “I wanted to see if the magic wave we were riding could determine Clea’s location for us.”
Hellcat sniffed. “So, theoretically, we could have ended up in Australia?”
“Or worse.”
“There’s worse than Australia?”
“I’m beginning to believe that anything’s possible. But I’m also beginning to trust the power rather than let myself get freaked out by it.”
Hellcat regarded Strange curiously, her green eyes sharp beneath her cropped, cherry-red fringe. “Well, well. Someone’s starting to grow more confident.”
Doctor Strange met her gaze coolly. “I can feel the magic inside me. Flowing through me. Every day, every hour, it gets more… familiar. Besides, what choice do I have but to start trusting in myself? What choice do any of us have? If we’re going to be the old man’s barricade against the forces of darkness we can’t just sit around looking like a bunch of emo kids cutting up their forearms while they wait for the next My Chemical Romance album.”
Valkyrie frowned. “Emu kids?”
“Emo, not emu. It’s… oh, never mind. Just ask Samantha next time you do your personality-switch thing.”
“Guilt can do wonders to bolster a man’s resolve, can’t it?” Hellcat purred. Strange glared at her.
“Well, I’ve got a lot to feel guilty about, haven’t I?” he snapped. “When I told you all about Clea, I could see the accusation in your faces. I did fail her. I knew what kind of monster she was married to but I didn’t try hard enough to help her get free. Now I don’t know if she’s alive or dead, but any suffering she’s gone through is on my conscience.”
“So you’ve not only grown a pair of magical hands, you’ve grown a magical pair of bollocks to match?”
“Something like that.”
Hellcat grinned. “Well, good. I like this new man-of-action Doctor Strange…”
The four Defenders stared up at the château once more, a heavy silence settling about the wooded grounds that even the ringing of the yachts in the marina couldn’t seem to penetrate. The castle was dark and forbidding. It appeared abandoned. And yet, if Strange’s trust in magic was well-placed, then Clea Balsamo was somewhere inside.
It was time to find out if that presence was in spirit as well as in body.
# # # # # # # # # #
“Please. Please, just listen. You don’t have to do this. I have money. I have more stinking money than you could possibly imagine. I - ”
“When the world broils in blood and hellfire there’ll be no call for material wealth, Signor Balsamo,” murmured Baron Mordo. “Besides, I’ve always been a fair-minded fellow. You were content to inflict unconscionable atrocities upon your poor wife, but baulk at the idea of reciprocation? How very unreasonable of you.”
“But how very much like the man he is,” another voice hissed. A woman’s voice, perhaps, although it was difficult to tell for sure. Clea Balsamo was… not the woman she used to be.
The château cellar was dark save for a solitary lantern illuminating the wall where Giuseppe Balsamo was presently cuffed by black iron manacles and restrained by short lengths of chain connected to rings embedded into the ancient stone. He was naked and bleeding from a number of shallow wounds, as well as from a particularly severe injury to his lower right leg. It was a bite. One of Mordo’s Order of the Damned, the beast formerly known as Jacques Roussel, had been hungry and difficult to restrain since their arrival in Switzerland but eventually Mordo had managed to distract him with a half-dozen unsuspecting tourists hiking the nearby hill trails. Now the beast was hunkered down in the shadows, feasting noisily on still-warm flesh - whilst Balsamo belonged instead to another.
Giuseppe Balsamo was in good condition for a man in his late forties, with a strapping physique and a fine head of hair that remained naturally black as a raven’s wing. He was also handsome, and his eyes hid the cruelty that lurked beyond remarkably well. There was no shame for Clea that she’d been lulled by his allure in the weeks before they’d wed, and afterwards… well, afterwards she’d been regularly reminded what fate would have in store for her if she ever attempted to leave her husband. It had shown much courage, and no little stupidity, for her to embark upon an affair with Stefan Strang. And this was the price she’d paid for that:
The thing that had been Clea Balsamo emerged now from the darkness into the pallid glow of the lantern, moving slowly but sinuously on her newly transformed body and her eyes - her many, many eyes - shining in the half-bright. The sight of her caused her prospective victim to scream like a terrified child.
Giuseppe had returned to the château two hours before, expecting to find his errant wife dead or at least so near death that she was no longer aware of any further torment he could mete out. He’d instead discovered an empty coffin, the glass lid shattered - and, in the minutes that followed, he’d learned that the château had been commandeered by a strange and fearsome band of rogues. Now he was being shown that his wife was one of them.
“Do you know how spiders feed, my love?” Clea whispered, reaching out with one of her legs. “They bite to inject venom, to paralyze, but then to eat they spit up enzymes to dissolve the internal organs of their prey and then suck up the liquefied juices. Sometimes this process can be drawn out to considerable length and can be unspeakably agonizing for the poor insect being slowly digested in this fashion. My only wish is I wasn’t now on such a tight schedule…”
Clea didn’t need to paralyze her husband. He was squirming and yanking so hard at his cuffs that the flesh was peeling away from his wrists in bloodied strips, but he wasn’t going anywhere. Clea allowed herself a moment or two to appreciate his misery, and then disgorged a mist of bright, pungent liquid over his feet. Giuseppe Balsamo was screaming even before the reddening skin began to smoke and blister and his blood leak out from between his melting toes. And that was just the beginning.
Baron Mordo turned away, satisfied but in no hurry to observe such a hideous spectacle. He was a fair man, and a fiend like Balsamo deserved this misery. Regrettably this time of retribution was about to be cut short…
“We have company.”
Mordo glanced up as a light flickered in the darkness, illuminating the frame of a large man stood in an arched doorway. This fellow, once professional psychiatrist Doctor Anthony Ludgate, now preferred to be called Druid. He had been dead for a number of days, but was quite lively considering.
“The disciples of our enemy,” Druid reported. “All four of them.”
Mordo scowled. “Here in the château? Now?”
Druid nodded. Mordo’s scowl deepened.
“Fuck,” he said. But then, slowly, he smiled. “Ah well. It had to happen eventually, didn’t it? And who are we not to welcome the workings of fate…?”
# # # # # # # # # #
Clea was dead. That’s what they were all thinking, although no one seemed inclined to say it, even the characteristically blunt Valkyrie. Doctor Strange knew, however, that the impression of death that permeated the halls of the château was unmistakable; it was soaked into the darkened walls, the floors, the doors, like a plantation house left to rot for half a century on the riverbank of the bayou.
The others were somewhat awed by their unfamiliar surroundings, or at least what they could see in the half-gloom after Strange had conjured a magical light to guide them, but the Doctor himself was gripped by altogether more unpleasant emotions. For him this place was filled with memories: here, the parlor with the open hearth where he and Clea had made love for the first time on a soft rug the colour of fresh snow; there, the kitchen galley where he’d burned eggs the following morning whilst attempting to prepare breakfast in his typically haphazard fashion. The central staircase, the paneled walls with framed pictures by semi-famous artists, the library with the bay windows that gazed out onto beautiful gardens… he recognized it all, but now it was somehow changed. Twisted.
Back in London he’d hoped for another chance, that his fears were unfounded, but his prayers had gone unanswered. Yes, Clea was dead. And Doctor Strange was sure now that they should never have come here.
“Something’s wrong,” Blade said.
Hellcat glanced at him, a sardonic retort on her lips, but the sight of her companion’s somber expression stilled her. That and the way the crucifix suspended about his neck on a silver chain was suddenly glowing. She lifted her hand and saw that the green malachite ring on her finger was smoldering with a similar radiance.
“I can feel it too,” Valkyrie reported. “We’re not alone here.” Her mouth was twitching with a faint smile as she spoke, and as she flexed her sword-arm so Dragonfang’s impossibly thin edge glimmered like a thread of lightning. She alone among them was looking forward to whatever came next - or perhaps that wasn’t quite true. Strange also seemed uncustomarily keen to confront the definite sense of evil that now encroached upon them.
“This was a mistake,” Strange said. As little as twenty-four hours ago he might have followed these words with a declaration that they should turn back immediately, returning to The Ancient’s Sanctum Sanctorum in Greenwich. Now, however, he showed no signs of wishing to retreat. It wasn’t courage. It wasn’t even confidence as Hellcat had suggested earlier. It was rage.
Clea was dead.
Doctor Strange raised both hands, his gloves of gold silk shining bright. His palms were angled towards him so that he could read the shifting runes stitched there. Words and sounds of unearthly origin spilled from his lips, his eyes narrowed to dark slits. This was an ancient incantation, channelled through him from the power of the runes. Loosely translated to modern English, the chant meant:
“Reveal yourselves, you hairy motherfuckers.”
And that’s exactly what happened.
The light that Strange had conjured earlier now both intensified and separated out into twenty or thirty or more gleaming ribbons of brightness that spooled and spiralled into every corner of the enormous reception hall where the four companions currently stood. The shadows were peeled back with a wet hiss, like something alive, and the immediate interior of the château was left revealed - as were those that were lurking in the darkness, observing the advance of their enemies.
Atop the wide flight of stairs directly ahead, at the end of the hall, a seven-and-a-half-foot tall beast with sable and chestnut fur, huge fangs and even larger claws snarled deep in its belly. Its maw was rich with blood but it was still hungry. Always hungry. Jacques Roussel.
On the right flank, a thin man with ghastly white flesh and scarlet eyes with no pupils, his mouth split in a hideous grin and his elongated canines - the only teeth in his black, black mouth - stabbing down over his lower lip. Deacon Frost.
On the left, a dead man, of reanimated corpseflesh and rotting stink. Druid. And then behind the Defenders, cutting off their escape route had they been of a mind, two more figures: a woman with a crooked, mutated body that was now arched about the spine with a massively swollen abdomen and supported on eight spindly legs, and a final man, dressed in black and seemingly normal in appearance compared to those around him but with a terrible darkness in his eyes - in his soul - that also suggested that he was the worst of them all. Clea Balsamo and Baron Karloff Amadeus Mordo.
Werewolf, vampire, zombie, spider-woman, and then the dark master…
“We are the Order of the Damned, the disciples of the Faltine, at the command of the Dread Dormammu,” uttered Mordo. And then he smiled, and doffed an imaginary hat. “I should thank you, Doctor. It was my intention to hunt you the four of you down in your own sanctuary and slaughter you in your beds. By coming to us, however, you have spared us the journey.”
Mordo turned in a circle, arms raised.
“Come now, children,” he said. “Rise up. Rise up…
“And bring me their bloody heads.”
NEXT ISSUE: The Defenders vs. The Order of the Damned to the finish. I’ll try my best to make it all worthwhile…
AUTHOR’S NOTES
Hello?
You know, I’m not even sure that anyone’s going to be reading this, and if they aren’t then the fault’s all mine. It’s been about a year since the last issue of this series, and that’s just daft. It took me a day or so of re-reading the previous issues to remember what the hell I was supposed to be writing about, and if that’s what it’s like for me then it must be worse for any potential audience.
Still, I am adamant that I’m going to finish off my commitment here, and hopefully it won’t be long before the next issue hits. If you are still reading faithfully, then: Thank you, I’m sorry, and I hope you’re enjoying the series.
- Meriades Rai