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Chapter 13

The shabby, white wooden house looked as if the pounding rain was likely to wash the rest of its peeling paint away. By now, the front yard inside the barbed-wire fence was one big black puddle, the surface of which reflected the lightning flickering overhead. The water stank of the saturated septic tank and drain field buried beneath it. A long aluminum boat equipped with an outboard motor sat on the front porch steps, ready for use in case, as seemed increasingly likely, the Mississippi broke its bonds and raged across the city.

Rogue had spent the last few hours trying to escape into the countryside, where there should be fewer potential victims to tempt her. Unfortunately, she kept blacking out, and when she came to herself, she invariably found that she’d reversed course and flown right back to Natchez. Now the hunger wrenched at her insides, agonizing, unbearable, and she plummeted toward the home beneath her, her tattered clothing flapping.

She splashed down beside a lighted window, then peeked through the gap between the curtains. On the other side was a living room, where a black family—a beefy man in overalls, a thin woman with corn-rowed hair tinted the color of a new penny, and a young boy and girl—sat watching a news broadcast on television. The father looked worried, and the mother, exasperated, as if the problems afflicting Natchez were a personal affront. The kids, on the other hand, were happily dividing their attention between the television and the Chutes and Ladders game laid out on the floor between them. They probably didn’t really understand that if a flood came, it could wash their home away.

Of course, thought Rogue, smirking, if they were already lying dead when the river came calling, it wouldn’t matter. The water could carry them away along with their possessions and give them a burial at sea. The idea seemed hilarious. She floated off the ground, poising herself to smash through the window and attack.

Then a spasm of horror wracked her. Sobbing, momentarily losing control of her power of flight, she fell into mud and filthy water, then struggled to crawl away from the enticing prey so conveniently at hand.

Crimson light flowered above her. Lifting her head, she beheld the transparent vision which had appeared to her repeatedly over the course of the day. Adoration, hope, and hatred all welled up inside her simultaneously, the grinding of her contradictory emotions almost as excruciating as her thirst for the vitality of others. “Master?” she croaked. “Angel?” “Yes, my child,” the swordsman said, “that’s right. Are you ready to come to me and let me take the pain away?” “Yes,” she said. “I mean, no! You’re not my friend! I know you’re not my friend!”

The figure in the cloak and tunic regarded her gravely. Even through the veil of blur that obscured his features, she could feel the pity in his eyes. “I am your friend, and if your mind were your own, you’d know it. It’s the other, the abominable thing that’s striving to steal your life, that rightly regards me as its foe.”

“How can I be sure of that?” she answered. The shape she was in, how could she be sure of anything?

“Look deep inside yourself,” the apparition said, “past all the pain and turmoil, and you’ll find the tie of love and trust that binds us.”

He was right, that was exactly what she felt. But she despised him as well, and had no idea which feelings were truly hers, and which the invader’s. A fresh pang of hunger made her muscles clench, and wrung an anguished groan from between her teeth.

“Please,” the swordsman said, “I implore you, don’t subject yourself to any more of this torment. Pass through the pain and into glory. Embrace your destiny.”

Should she trust him? If Professor Xavier were here, what would he advise? As soon as she thought of the telepath, she imagined the ecstasy of absorbing the awesome energies of his mind, and, loving and loathing the predator she’d become, pounded the ground in rage. Her fist splashed up water and clots of muck. “I want to trust you,” she said. “I don’t even remember why I shouldn’t. But...” She realized she no longer knew what she’d meant to say next. Soon, she feared, she wouldn’t be able to frame and hold a coherent thought at all.

“I wanted to spare you any additional pain,” said the phantom in red. “But perhaps you have to sink even deeper into your sorrows before you can rise again. Go back to the window.”

“I can’t,” she said. “If I look at that family again, I’ll attack them.” The idea triggered a pulse of anticipation.

“No, you won’t,” the swordsman said. “I’ll help you control yourself.” He waved his left hand, and the hunger burning inside Rogue weakened, still gnawing at her, but not as fiercely as before.

Even that measure of relief inspired a profound gratitude, but like all her emotions, the feeling was impure, tainted with bewilderment and anger. “Why didn’t you do that before?” she asked.

“Because it exhausts me,” he said, “and the benefit is fleeting. As I told you, I can do little that will truly help you until we meet in the flesh. Now please, go to the window.”

She clambered up from the muddy ground and did as he’d bade her. Just as she peeked through the curtains again, her own face appeared on the television screen.

The sight alarmed her and made her want to flinch away. Instead, she strained to hear the news anchor’s solemn bass voice through the glass.

“.. . death count stands at seventy-two,” the reporter said. “So far, Rogue has targeted large gatherings of people, so the authorities are urging everyone to stay at home if possible. But if you must leave—if you have to evacuate to escape a flood—rest assured that the police and the military are doing everything possible to protect the evacuation routes, emergency shelters, and other public facilities from another attack. ’ ’

“No!” wailed Rogue, lurching back around toward the apparition. “I didn’t kill those people! I’d remember!”

“If only that were so,” said the figure in red. “Yet the truth is that you’ve been blacking out all day.”

“But if I drained that many people, how can I still be starving?”

“No one’s essence can sate you for long. That’s a part of your malady. Come to me and let me cure it before you slaughter any more innocent strangers, or any more of your friends.”

“Ororo.” Her fists clenched, and tears stung her eyes, while at the same time, she relished the memory of just how delicious it had felt to absorb the windrider’s superhuman energies.

“And not just Ororo,” the swordsman said gently. “Scott. Jean. Logan. Remember the confrontation in the stable where you went to ground?”

Muddled impressions of the battle crawled through her head. Wielding Storm’s mutant abilities along with her own, she’d crushed her teammates as if they were puny, helpless humans. It had been glorious.

No! No, it hadn’t! It had been a nightmare. She clutched at her temples as if she could break open her skull and pluck Helen’s spirit out.

“Wolverine attacked you with his claws,” the vision said. “That’s why your clothes are in rags. Cyclops battered you with his optic blast, and Phoenix with her telekinesis. None of it truly hurt you very much, but it drove you into a frenzy, and in the end ...” He waved his hand.

A circular hole opened in the air, and on the other side was the shadowy interior of the stable. Scattered about the floor lay the motionless forms of her friends, their features contorted with their death agonies, their bodies shriveled as if by some wasting disease.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to them, and then, to her horror, realized that she was grinning with glee at her victory.

The image vanished. “Please, come to me,” said the man in red.

“Yes,” she said heavily, “I will.” She certainly couldn’t go on like this, a mass murderer, a menace to those she loved and everyone else on Earth. Even if the angel meant her harm, even if he killed her, she’d be better off than she was right now.

But really, she knew he wouldn’t hurt her. Now that she’d made her decision, her doubts dropped away. She loved him, revered him, needed him, and could no longer imagine why she’d ever even contemplated flouting his will.

The phantom grinned. “At last.”

“How do I find you?” she asked.

“In the old church, of course,” he said. “You’ve been inching your way towards it since the beginning, so you must know the way.”

She realized that she did.

Storm and Wolverine crouched on the wet, slick, canted roof of a fast-food taco franchise which was supposed to resemble an old Spanish mission, clinging to the fake belfry to anchor themselves in place. Down the flooded street stood a five-story hospital which looked like a prime location for another massacre. Their fellow X-Men, Amanda, and Dracula had taken up positions elsewhere in the area to keep watch over other likely sites. Those who couldn’t move at superhuman speed had partnered with those who could fly or teleport them around.

Pelted by the wind and the rain, the windrider wished she still had her cape to wrap around her. “Why don’t you just make yourself dry?” asked Logan. Since he was looking in the other direction, peering through a small but powerful pair of night-vision binoculars, she assumed that he must have heard her tremble.

“To tell you the truth,” she said, “I’m not sure that my powers have come back to maximum strength even now. I would prefer to save my energy.”

“Oh. Well, for what it’s worth, once we get home, the cold and flu medicine’s on me.”

“I should make that purchase, since it was my responsibility to stop the rain.”

“Don’t worry, we will, though I admit we’re cuttin’ it close. The river’s mighty high.”

She grimaced. “I hope you’re right.”

He lowered the binoculars and turned to look at her. “Hey, you’re not allowed to be demoralized now that Amanda’s taken Belasco’s whammy off us. As a field leader, you’re supposed to set a good gung-ho example for humble grunts like me.”

A smile momentarily tugged at the corners of her mouth. “I’ve seen you in many different moods, my friend, but I don’t recall ever meeting the humble Wolverine. I don’t mean to sound defeatist. But I can’t help thinking how elaborate Belasco’s scheme has turned out to be. How artfully he’s manipulated us, and how many obstacles he’s placed in our path. We want to believe that we’ve finally figured out a way to deal with him, but what if we’re mistaken? What if he expected us to do precisely what we’re doing? What if we’re still playing the game according to his rules?”

Logan shrugged. “You just have to have faith that the creep does make mistakes, and that we can take advantage of them. Otherwise we might as well go home to the mansion, knock back a few brews, and wait for Great Cthulhu—or whatever it is that Belasco works for—to show up and suck out our spleens. And hey, if we X-Men don’t have a right to believe in ourselves, who does? Look how many times we’ve beaten the odds.”

“I can’t argue with that,” Ororo said. Lightning flared, momentarily revealing a speck streaking across the sky. “Look there!” She pointed.

Wolverine quickly clasped the binoculars to his eyes. “Got her,” he said after a second. “It’s our girl, flyin’ like a bat out of hell.” He yanked a GCS Unit from his wide red belt. “Target sighted. She's cornin’ out of the west and probably headed for the hospital.”

“Roger that,” Scott responded.

“Understood,” said Amanda, a crackle of static breaking up her voice.

“We’re on our way,” said Kurt.

Ororo spoke to the wind, and a howling updraft lifted her off the roof. She extended her hands to Wolverine, and then a searchlight blazed down from overhead and caught them in its glare. Despite the sheets of rain, it dazzled her, but, squinting, she could tell that it was shining from a SAFE hovercraft.

“Freeze, X-Men.” said an amplified voice.

“Perfect timing,” growled Logan as he grabbed Ororo’s hands. She lifted him, the phlanged rod on the nose of the airship glowed white, and the roof of the taco franchise exploded.

Nightcrawler and Dracula, the latter in his winged, half-bat form, crouched on a ledge two thirds of the way up the facade of an office building. The mutant supposed that they might well have been mistaken for a pair of gargoyles had anyone spotted them at all.

His shoulders hunched against the cold, steady rain, Kurt wished he could have kept watch with Amanda. She could have used the moral support that he was best able to give her. But tactical considerations had dictated that she partner with Piotr, whom :She could teleport at need. The Bavarian took what solace he could from the fact that Dracula wasn’t with her either, and was thus unable to taunt and tempt her.

“Are you afraid,” said the vampire unexpectedly, “that if Miss Sefton becomes a true adept, your paltry mutant talents will cease to impress her?” In his current shape, his voice had a snarling, bestial roughness, but was still perfectly understandable.

“No,” said Kurt, “I simply don’t want her to turn into anything that remotely resembles you.”

“Belasco was right about one thing. How little you know yourself. How blind you are to your own capacity for selfishness.”

The image of that other Kurt Wagner, Belasco’s depraved toady, came to Nightcrawler’s mind, and he did his best to push it away. ‘ ‘Whereas you revel in your dark side. For which I probably shouldn’t blame you, since it’s the only side you have.”

Dracula laughed. “Touche, Wagner. But superior men have the right and indeed the duty to pursue their ambitions, no matter what the cost to others. Where would the world be if Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar—’ ’

Logan’s voice spoke from Kurt’s wrist radio. He and Storm had sighted the impostor heading for the hospital. Nightcrawler tersely acknowledged the call.

The plan was to allow the fake to descend to the ground before closing in on her and attacking. That way, X-Men like Wolverine, Piotr, and Kurt himself, who could neither fly nor attack at range, could get at her. For the moment, the Bavarian mutant intended to teleport himself to a spot that afforded a good view of the hospital. Then, when the killer arrived, he’d make a final jump and have at her. If she was as powerful as the real Rogue, his efforts would only provide a distraction at best. But he hoped he could at least keep her from killing any innocent civilians until his comrades entered the fray.

Dracula would have to flap along to the battlefield under his own steam. Kurt was capable of teleporting with another person, but the effort not only drained his strength but, for some reason, that of his passenger as well, and that was no good when they were heading into a fight.

He prepared to displace himself, and Dracula spread his enormous black wings. Then a white light flashed across the rooftops of the city, almost like the flare of the thunderbolts, but not quite. The boom of an explosion came a second later.

“What the devil?” Dracula said.

Two hovercrafts floated down from the sky, their searchlights catching the figures on the ledge. The vampire hissed, and Nightcrawler squinted and raised his arm against the glare. “We’re agents of the United States government,” said an amplified female voice, “and you’re under arrest. Stay where you are and put up your hands.”

Dracula’s wings beat, a sound like the crack of a whip, as he leapt from his perch and hurtled upward at the nearer of the two airships. The energy weapons mounted on the SAFE vehicles glowed.

Kurt refiexively teleported to the roof of a bank across the street. A split second later, brilliant beams of force spat from the hovercraft. One pulverized the section of ledge where he’d just been standing, sending chunks of concrete showering down into the standing water below. The other smashed into Dracula, hurling him back against the side of the building.

Nightcrawler realized he had a decision to make. He didn’t know how SAFE had spotted him and Dracula, but given his powers of teleportation and near invisibility in darkness, it was a good bet that he could shake his attackers off his tail and go where he was supposed to go. With his ability to dissolve into mist, Dracula ought to be able to do the same, albeit considerably more slowly. But would he?

Evidently not. His wings shredded, but reknitting themselves by the second, the undead creature rose at the hovercraft, this time veering unpredictably back and forth to throw off the gunner’s aim.

Kurt grimaced. He supposed he could neither abandon his enraged ally to fight alone nor, assuming the vampire prevailed, to deal with his attackers as savagely he might prefer. And perhaps it would be better after all to knock out the hovercraft now, lest they find their way to the hospital and interfere with the operation there. He only prayed that he and Dracula could win this skirmish quickly.

One of the floating gunships pivoted in his direction. Evidently it had infrared or some other capability which negated his ability to disappear into shadow, at least at this distance. He teleported onto the vehicle’s dull gray rounded roof.

Since it wasn’t hurtling and jolting through the air the way the Midnight Runner had, he had no difficulty clinging to the ship. Smiling, imagining the frantic efforts of the agents on board to determine where he’d jumped to this time, he crawled toward one of the windows. Once he got a peek at the interior, he could teleport inside without fear of a bungled arrival.

Agony blazed through his body, while his muscles juddered, clenched, and locked. He’d underestimated his adversaries. Somehow they’d been able to discern exactly where he was, and also to electrify the hull.

He had to break free before the current incapacitated or even killed him. Though still unable to see his destination, he tried to teleport a third time.

At first nothing happened, and he was afraid that the pain was impairing his mutant power as much as his motor control.

Then, suddenly, he was safely inside the cramped confines of the hovercraft. Immediately, the occupants, a young man and woman in black bodysuits, spun around in their chairs, scrambled to their feet, and snatched for the pistols in their holsters.

Kurt was shaking uncontrollably from the shock he’d endured a moment before. He wasn’t sure he could even make a purposeful move, much less fight, but he had little choice but to try. He hurled himself forward, punching.

His first blow at the young man missed outright. Abandoning his efforts to draw his sidearm, the SAFE agent grabbed him, slammed him against a bulkhead, then seized his neck in a choke hold. Meanwhile the other operative yanked out her automatic and pointed it at Kurt’s face.

Nightcrawler frantically snatched for her wrist with his tail, snagged it, and jerked it just as the gun flashed and banged, the explosion painfully loud in the enclosed space. The bullet clanged into the bulkhead scant inches from his skull.

Maintaining his grip on the woman’s shooting arm, Kurt broke free of her partner’s stranglehold by simultaneously jamming his arms upward between his attacker’s and kneeing him in the groin. The male agent’s mouth fell open, and he stumbled backward. Kurt knocked him cold with a punch to the jaw, then pivoted and gave the female operative, who was still wrestling with his tail, the same treatment.

That, thought Nightcrawler, gasping, still twitching spasti-cally, was a lot harder than it should have been. He had no idea who in the U.S. government had come up with the idea of an agency whose only agenda was to deal with superhumans, but he hoped the officious busybody would lose the next election.

He wished he could simply slump down in one of the seats and pull himself together, but knew there wasn’t time. Scrambling into the cockpit, he quickly made sure that the hovercraft was floating in place and not about to crash into anything, then peered through the windshield to see how Dracula was faring against the other gunship.

The vampire was clinging to its hull, the talons of one hand sunk into the metal to anchor himself, the fingers of the other striving to tear open the hatch. Kurt had no doubt that the crew were currently doing their best to electrocute their assailant, but as far as the X-Man could tell, the current wasn’t even slowing Dracula down.

In another second, the lock broke, and the hatch swung outward. Dracula ripped it from its hinges and dropped it toward the street below. As he swung himself on board, he flowed into human form, perhaps because his huge wings would get in his way in the cabin.

Kurt waited for Dracula to clear the opening, then teleported aboard the other hovercraft, where the vampire was lunging at the crewmen. They in turn were frantically shooting him, to no perceptible effect. The creature in the cloak dropped one with a sweep of his open hand, then paralyzed the other simply by gazing into his eyes.

Nightcrawler reached beneath his tabard for the crucifix. “Dracula!” he said sharply.

The king of the undead turned, and, noticing the position of his ally’s hand, smiled sardonically. “You trust that trinket too much. But have no fear. I know I don’t have time to feed.”

“Good,” Kurt replied. Once again, he made sure the airship wasn’t about to crash. “Let’s go rendezvous with the others.” They moved back to the open hatch.

A third hovercraft dropped into view.

“Fighting these fools isn’t helping us catch the impostor,” Dracula said. “Go. PH elude them and follow as quickly as I can.”

“Right,” said Kurt, hoping the creature spoke the truth, and teleported.

Scott, Jean, and Kitty had stationed themselves atop a flat rooftop, sharing it with what Cyclops considered to be a rather cryptic billboard. It didn’t have any writing on it, and a person might actually have to study it for a moment to make out the shape of the dromedary hidden in the psychedelic green and yellow swirls. As he and Shadowcat kept watch, passing his binoculars back and forth, and Jean doggedly scanned with her telepathy, he wondered idly just how many cigarettes this particular ad campaign had actually sold.

But when Logan’s call came in, all such extraneous thoughts instantly vanished from his mind, and no doubt from the minds of his companions as well. He’d barely acknowledged the message when Jean lifted him and Kitty in her psychokinetic grasp. Although the younger woman could walk or run on air, she couldn’t do so any faster than a nonmutant could move on the ground, and thus needed the assistance to reach the hospital in a timely manner.

Several blocks away, a white light blazed. “What’s that?” Kitty cried.

Thanks to their psychic link, Cyclops felt Jean investigating with her mental powers. “A hovercraft is attacking Ororo and Logan,” the redhead said after a moment. “Do we keep on toward the hospital?”

“Yes,” Scott replied grimly. “We absolutely have to catch the impostor, which means that we’ll have to trust Wolverine and Storm to manage on their own.”

“Right,” said Jean. They streaked on through the rain, and more flares lit up the night. Judging from the direction, Scott surmised that SAFE was attacking Kurt and Dracula too.

“It’s not fair!” Kitty said. “We're fighting to save the world, and they’re trying to kill us!”

So what else is new? Scott thought sourly, and then Jean spun him around to face the hovercraft that was swooping silently down from the darkness like a huge metal owl.

The flanged rod on the ship’s nose glowed, and Cyclops reflexively fired at it. His scarlet optic blast caught it dead on and shattered it, jolting the entire hovercraft in the process. The stub of the weapon exploded an instant later.

Nice shot, said Jean across their psychic link, just as flaps in the hovercraft’s belly dropped to reveal twin banks of missiles, which instantly hurtled from their mountings.

Snapping his head from left to right, Scott swept his optic blast in an arc which detonated half the rockets midway between the hovercraft and himself. Meanwhile, Jean created a telekinetic shield to block the rest, grunting as if she’d been punched when they slammed into the barrier. Kitty, whose powers were of limited application in the present situation, simply became intangible, protecting herself and relieving Phoenix of the burden of supporting her.

The exploding missiles rocked the hovercraft. Before it could recover, Jean’s telekinesis carried Scott under it and then behind it, as he raked its jet assemblies with his optic blast.

Crippled, the airship fell. Straining once again, Jean shoved it, shortening the drop considerably by dumping it atop a roof. Thanks to her effort, the men inside had presumably survived the impact.

Phoenix looked at Kitty. “Ready?”

“Yes,” the younger woman said. Becoming solid once more, she dropped an inch, and then Jean’s psychokinesis caught her. The three mutants flew on.

A pair of snipers fired from upper-story windows. Cyclops knocked out one and Jean stunned the other with a mental bolt. Elsewhere in the night, white flares pierced the downpour and the gloom. Explosions roared, and automatic weapons chattered.

Scott wondered just how many of his comrades would make it to the hospital, and just how difficult it might be to fight their way clear again. Because it was now obvious that the hovercraft hadn’t just stumbled across them. While the X-Men had been making plans to trap the fake Rogue, SAFE and the Army had also managed to predict in what vicinity she’d next appear, and made extensive preparations to take out any mutants who showed their face there.

A chain-link fence surrounded the construction site. A small bulldozer sat under a crane, and runoff water gurgled as it streamed into die square pit in the center of the lot. In the darkness, Piotr’s hulking metallic form might easily have been mistaken for yet another piece of heavy equipment.

Like Amanda, the Russian spent most of the time watching the sky and the Salvation Army facility across the street. But every so often, the sorceress caught him staring at her. Condemning her for what he regarded as her cowardice or her selfishness, she supposed.

Amanda didn’t know what to say to him. or even what she ought to feel. When Logan’s call came in, it was a relief. If they could catch Rogue’s double now, then with luck, Dracula’s offer to empower her wouldn’t matter anymore.

“Let’s go,” Piotr said. She took his huge steel hand, recited the trigger word inside her head, and transported the two of them to the hospital parking lot, where she found herself to be almost knee-deep in water. Grimacing, she hastily took cover by crouching behind a car, and Colossus did the same.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then white lights began to flare across the rooftops of the city. “What in the name of the White Wolf is this?” Piotr growled.

“Trouble,” said Amanda, just as a massive armored vehicle lumbered out of the rain. Its turret cannon swiveled in their direction, and a red dot of light swept across the bodies of the parked cars. “And here’s our piece of it.”

Gripping Logan’s hands, Ororo yanked him away from the roof, then, or so it seemed to the Canadian, rode the shockwave of the blast as she’d ride the wind. The hovercraft pivoted in the air, taking aim once more, and she veered back and forth to keep out of its sights.

“Throw me at it!” said Wolverine. “Then get after the fake!”

“What?”

“The feds are bushwhackin’ us. We can’t count on her to go on to the hospital, not in the middle of a firefight. She might turn tail, and right now, you’re the only flyer who’s close enough to stop her. So go! I’ll keep the hovercraft off your back.”

Ororo gave a nod and let him go. A wind bore him up and hurled him at the airship like an arrow.

He slammed into the nose with a force sufficient to break a normal man’s bones. It might even have knocked him out for a second, because time seemed to skip, and then, revived by his high-speed metabolism, he found himself slipping off the butt of the energy cannon into space.

He grabbed the rod, straddled it, popped his claws, then, snarling in approved mad dog berserker fashion, faking it this time around, slashed furiously at the window in the front of the cockpit. He didn’t know if he’d be able to cut through, but it didn’t matter. At the moment, all he cared about was distracting the crew from messing with Ororo, and judging by the wide-eyed, panicky expressions of the two clean-cut kids behind the glass, he was succeeding.

The fed in the pilot’s seat hit on the idea of bucking the ship up and down and back and forth in an effort to unseat his unwanted passenger. Nice try, kid, Logan thought, beginning to enjoy himself, but no cigar. I can ride a bull or a bronc, and I can ride this piece of junk too.

The X-Man doubted that the windshield was made of anything much like ordinary glass. It was probably some high-tech, space-age, state-of-the-art, supposedly indestructible polymer. Nevertheless, his claws began to crack and gouge it, increasing the terror of the guys inside the ship another notch.

He guessed he was actually going to be able to break in and put them out of their misery.

Then electricity crackled through his body, searing him with agony, paralyzing him. When it finally stopped, he was too spastic to keep his balance. He fell for what seemed a long way, splashed down in water, then banged his head on the hard surface beneath it. He plummeted once more, this time into oblivion.

Ororo hated to leave Logan behind. Formidable as he was, his talents were by no means ideally suited to neutralizing a gun-ship in flight. But she knew he was right. If the false Rogue turned and ran, she was the only one who had a prayer of stopping her.

Or at least she hoped she did. Her mind was clear again, but had she recovered sufficient strength to defeat such a powerful adversary all by herself? Frowning, she strove to thrust doubt out of her mind. To trust in the Goddess and herself.

First, of course, she had to find the impostor, or she’d never even get the chance to put herself to the test. And for a few moments, peering about, soaring upward through the fury of the wind and rain, she couldn’t spot her target anywhere. But at last she caught sight of the hurtling figure she’d seen before.

She smiled. When it came to fighting or hunting, Wolverine’s instincts rarely played him false, and they hadn’t this time, either. The impostor was beating a hasty retreat. Indeed, she was nearly over the river already. Ororo spoke to the wind, urging it to bear her along even faster, to close the gap between her and her quarry, and, roaring, the wind obeyed.

Ordinarily Storm wouldn’t attack an unfamiliar foe with the maximum force at her command for fear of killing her. But by all accounts, the fake Rogue was so powerful that she’d have to cut loose to take her out. Nor did she much like to strike from ambush, without giving her opponent a chance to surrender, but with the future of the human race at stake, this was no time for niceties. She reached up into the thunderclouds and drew down what she needed.

Lightning blazed, transfixing the form of the murderer with Rogue’s features. Thunder bellowed, the boom deafening. As the dazzling flare winked out, the impostor tumbled, and Ororo swooped after her. Then the impostor arrested her fall, looked around, spotted her attacker, and streaked up at her.

Ororo’s mouth tightened in disappointment. For a moment she’d dared to hope that one lightning bolt had decided the battle, but obviously it wasn’t going to be that easy. Retreating backward and higher into the sky, she extended her arms.

Her tangled brown, white-streaked hair streaming in the wind, the impostor immediately began to zigzag unpredictably back and forth, dodging just as Ororo herself had done to foil the marksmanship of the men aboard the hovercraft. Storm discharged crackling bolts of electricity from her fingertips, but failed to hit her mark.

Perhaps she needed to let the impostor get closer, the drawback of that tactic being that distance was her own best defense. Her ability to command the forces of nature notwithstanding, her flesh and bones were no more resistant to damage than those of a normal human being. If her inhumanly strong adversary got her hands on her, she could easily tear her limb from limb.

Well, the Professor had never claimed that serving in the X-Men was going to be safe.

She stopped retreating and likewise held her fire until the killer flew close enough for her to discern just how perfect a double for Rogue she actually was. Then she hurled another pair of sizzling thunderbolts.

The attacks caught the fake in the chest. She shuddered spasmodically and fell a few yards, then, shrieking in rage, rocketed at Ororo once more. The windrider tried to gather the power for another blast, but the charge started building too sluggishly to do her any immediate good.

Ororo dodged sideways and downward. Fists outstretched, the false Rogue streaked past her with inches to spare, then wheeled for another attack. The two women spun around each other like leaves in a cyclone, the impostor punching, grabbing, and kicking, the X-Man striving to stay just out of her reach, buffeting her with gusts of hurricane-force wind to knock her off balance and hamper her attacks.

Often the killer’s blows missed by a hair, but she never actually connected. Quick as she was, Ororo was a shade more agile in flight, an asset, she reflected, which might keep her safe right up until the moment when fatigue began to slow her down.

Finally she built up another potent charge of electricity. Enough for one more full-force attack, anyway. She wasn’t sure just how many critical seconds it would take her to accumulate another after that, or to muster the wherewithal to call more lightning from the clouds, and she very much doubted that she could overcome the impostor just by pum-meling her with the wind. So she’d better make this shot count.

Gasping for effect, she slowed her evasive maneuvers. Already leering in anticipation of victory, the false Rogue lunged at her. Storm let her close almost to arm’s length, then hurled a flare of electricity into her face.

The next instant, the impostor slammed into her like a cannonball, driving the wind from her lungs, stunning her, impelling her across the sky. Entangled with the other woman, Ororo struggled frantically to shove her away. Finally she realized that the fake was unconscious. That last burst of lightning, applied more or less directly to her brain, had done the trick.

Ororo also noticed that the two of them were falling. Thank the Goddess that at least that wasn’t a problem anymore. She called for an updraft, and then, clutching her prisoner under the arms, flew back toward the spot where she’d left Logan, toward weapons flashing and barking in the night.

Neither Logan nor the hovercraft were in the same location. But down the street in front of the hospital, a battle raged. A number of SAFE airships, armored ground vehicles, and infantry had more or less surrounded the rest of Ororo’s friends. As she watched, Colossus staggered through a hail of machine-gun fire, the slugs ricocheting off his steel body, picked up a Bradley personnel carrier, and flipped it onto its back with its weaponry pointing in the wrong direction. Scott’s red optic blast and iridescent waves of Amanda’s sorcery smashed at a tank. Kurt blinked through a mass of rifles, punching and teleporting, punching and teleporting, leaving a trail of smoke clouds behind him. Jean’s telekinesis gripped one hovercraft and pounded it against another. Kitty ran through the air toward a third airship, relying on her phasing power to get her safely inside, where she could use her martial arts against the crew. Abruptly she reeled, evidently under attack by something—an ultrasound weapon perhaps—which could affect an intangible target, then dropped behind the cover provided by the overturned Bradley.

Logan was nowhere to be seen. Storm hoped he was all right, merely unable to penetrate the ring of soldiers to rejoin his friends. There was no sign of Dracula, either.

Ororo thought that her teammates could extricate themselves from this pointless battle, but perhaps not quickly, and possibly not without doing serious harm to some of their misguided assailants. It would be far preferable if she could stop the hostilities immediately. And maybe she could, if she could just get the federal agents’ attention.

Trying to ignore her weariness, she hovered above the fight, high enough that no one was likely to notice her prematurely, and summoned up what remained of her power for one final effort. When she felt focused, ready to invoke the forces that were hers to direct, she commanded the storm, and it obeyed her.

Lightning bolts blasted the earth between the X-Men and their attackers, again and again and again, a display of nature’s violence that put the effects of any weapon on the ground to shame. Thunder roared on and on, a sound like the foundations of the universe breaking apart. In the aftermath, the soldiers and SAFE agents stood gaping in stupefaction.

Seizing the moment, Storm floated down and lit on the blackened patch of ground she’d just devastated. Her legs were rubbery, but it was never wise to display true weakness to an adversary, so she made herself stand straight and tall. “There’s no need for this fight,” she said. “The X-Men haven’t declared war on Homo sapiens. We came to Natchez to apprehend the murderer who’s been impersonating our teammate Rogue. And here she is.” Clenching her jaw, hoping that no one could see how much the effort cost her, she hoisted her unconscious captive up for everyone’s inspection.

For a second, the SAFE agents and soldiers simply continued to stare at her. Then an amplified female voice said, “Hold your fire.” A hovercraft floated to the ground, the hatch opened, and a slender black woman climbed out into the rain. Clad in the same black bodysuit as the other SAFE agents, she had some sort of energy pistol holstered on her hip. and wore a helmet that incorporated radio gear. Her strong, rather attractive features wore an expression as serious and intent as Cyclops’s “game face.”

“I’m Major Nefertiti Jones of SAFE,” she said, striding toward Ororo. “I’m in charge here. Now, if you’re not responsible for the killing, and you’ve captured the person who is, good. But 1 still have orders to take you all into custody.”

“That’s unacceptable,” said Scott, advancing to stand with Ororo. Behind him, the other X-Men moved up as well. ‘ ‘The impostor’s crimes, heinous as they were, were only intended to divert attention from a threat to the entire world, and at best, we only have a few hours left to defuse that situation. We can’t waste the time hanging around while you interrogate us.”

“Sorry,” said Major Jones, “but like I said, I have orders to detain you, and that’s the way it’ll have to be.”

Ororo felt a pang of anger. She suspected that if the Avengers or the Fantastic Four had claimed they needed to rush off to save the planet, this glorified policewoman would have released them without a second thought. But as usual, when mutants were involved, it was a different story.

“We’ll smash our way out of here if we have to,” growled Piotr, glaring. The soldiers and SAFE agents behind Major Jones eyed him warily.

“Indeed we will,” said Dracula. Ororo hadn’t seen the vampire skulk from the darkness, and she jumped. Even Major Jones looked disconcerted for an instant. “But perhaps it needn’t come to that.”

“Who are you?” asked Major Jones.

“One of our allies,” said Scott quickly. “He prefers to remain anonymous.” Storm was grateful for her teammate’s circumspection. It was likely to be difficult enough to win the authorities’ trust without announcing that the X-Men were working with Count Dracula.

The vampire gave Scott an amused glance, then directed his attention back toward the SAFE agent. Storm wondered if he was subtly bringing his powers of mesmerism to bear. “Major, you’ve been ordered to arrest the X-Men because supposedly, one of their number is a murderer, and has announced repeatedly that her comrades were about to lend their hands to the ongoing slaughter, although you’ll notice that in point of fact, they never did. Suppose I prove to your satisfaction that the killer is not Rogue. Then would you be willing to release us to track down the threat that Cyclops spoke of? It literally is a menace to the entire human race.”

Major Jones hesitated. “How would you prove she’s a fake?” she asked at last.

“The first step,” said Dracula, “will be to wake her up.” He extended his pallid, long-nailed hands, and, grateful to be rid of her weight, Ororo handed the impostor over. Supporting the false Rogue in a close embrace, the vampire gazed into her face. “Come back to me, my daughter. It is your sire who calls.”

The impostor squirmed sluggishly. Her eyelids fluttered open, and then, when she realized who was clutching her, she goggled in tenor.

“You are wise to be afraid,” Dracula said mildly. “I’m quite displeased with you.”

The impostor thrashed, trying to break free. Dracula’s eyes flared red, and she froze in place.

“Change, Carla,” said the creature in black. “Show these mortals your true features.”

She glared back at him.

“Perhaps you imagine yourself unable to revert,” Dracula continued, “even if you would, for I can see that Belasco has done his best to tamper with your fundamental nature. But my blood is not so easily diluted. You can still shapeshift if your maker requires it, and I do. Now change!”

The prisoner’s—Carla’s—flesh oozed like molten wax, the process markedly slower than Dracula’s almost instantaneous transformations. Judging by her anguished screams, it was vastly more painful as well. Despite all the hideous things the murderer had done, and despite everything that was at stake, Ororo yearned to end her torture, and judging by the shocked, sickened expressions on the faces of her fellow X-Men, they felt the same. But before anyone quite managed to utter a protest, the white streak melted from Carla’s tousled brown hair, and the metamorphosis was done.

The writhing creature in Dracula’s hands still resembled Rogue, but even if she hadn't had crimson eyes, fangs, and a vampire’s telltale pallor, it would still have been obvious she was a different person. “Voila,” said Dracula, turning her to give Major Jones a better view of her face.

“My God,” said the SAFE agent, “are you and she what I think you are?”

The vampire smiled. “It’s better that we not explore that particular topic. It would further complicate an already complex situation.”

“Do we have your permission to go about our business?’’ asked Scott.

Major Jones grimaced. “Well, you did take down the murderer, and it does appear that she isn’t Rogue. I also observed that you took pains to avoid seriously injuring any of my people. I’m not one to discount someone’s word ’cause of an accident of birth—besides which, anyone who’s paid proper attention would know that you folks have done more good than harm for the world. So I think maybe we can work something out.” She turned to the men standing behind her. “How’s our prisoner?”

“Conscious, ma’am,” a sergeant said. “In fact, he says he’s fine.”

“All right, bring him out and take off the manacles.” Four soldiers escorted a shackled Logan into view. The Canadian’s hands and forearms were completely covered by massive, glovelike metal restraints, and he hobbled as if he was in pain, but the soreness was easing by the moment. He grinned at Ororo. “Next time I consider a stunt like that, remind me that I can’t fly. Gettin’ captured by Magneto is one thing, but this is embarrassing.”

“I know about your healing factor,” said Major Jones, ‘ ‘but even so, are you sure you should be walking? When my men fished you out of that puddle, you had a concussion, internal injuries, and were nearly drowned to boot.”

“A mere bag o’ shells, darlin’. Don’t believe me, talk to your boss,” Wolverine said with a grin, referring to Colonel Sean Morgan, the head of SAFE and a former member of U.S. Army Intelligence. “He and I had a scrape in Yugoslavia once where I came out lookin’ a helluva lot worse than this.” When one of his guards removed the manacles, he instantly reached for a smoke.

Major Jones turned back toward the mutant team leaders, Dracula, and Carla. “What’s your next move?” the SAFE agent asked. “Maybe we can support you.”

‘ ‘My disobedient daughter here forsook me to serve a sorcerer called Belasco,” said Dracula.

“A sorcerer?” asked Major Jones dubiously. Dracula’s mouth tightened at the interruption.

Kitty grinned. “Just say ‘super-villain’ in your report. It will make life easier all around.”

“Carla will now,” Dracula continued, “tell us where her new master can be found.”

“No!” said Carla, thrashing futilely in the elder vampire’s grasp. “I won’t! You can’t make me!”

Turning to her again, Dracula stared into her eyes. As the seconds dragged by, Carla’s snarl gradually changed to a smirk of satisfaction.

“I command you,” Dracula gritted, “open your mind to me.”

“No,” said the prisoner. “When I woke and saw you, it rattled me, and I was still weak from the lightning, and that’s how you made me unmask myself. But you can never force me to betray him. I belong to him now, not you, never you again!”

Finally Dracula broke eye contact with her and turned toward Storm, something that might almost have been human dismay in his bone-white, arrogant face. “She’s right,” the vampire said softly, as if it were only to the woman he professed to love that he cared to confess his failure. “Belasco has given her the strength to withstand me.”

“But maybe not to withstand me,” said Phoenix. “I believe this is my area of expertise even more than yours.” Dracula eyed her appraisingly. “Indeed. Then I will continue to apply my powers of coercion to support of your efforts, and we’ll see what can be done.”

Jean took a deep breath and let it out slowly, calming herself and focusing her power for the task at hand. Although her talents had served to bring Excalibur and the X-Men together, and to help fend off the federal agents in the battle just concluded, she nonetheless felt that thus far, she hadn’t been very useful. This was her chance to redeem herself.

Dracula turned Carla around to face her, and she gazed into the female vampire’s eyes. The crimson orbs burned with defiance and an infinite capacity for malice. Jean thrust at them as if her psi powers were a dagger, or their teammate Psy-locke’s psychic knife, trying to plunge it into the mind behind them.

Her first effort rebounded from a powerful shield. Perhaps because the defense was the product of Belasco’s infernal magic, it felt different than any such barrier she’d encountered before. Simply touching it made her wince.

Sensing that Phoenix’s attempt had failed, Carla laughed and spat in her face, but if she wanted to see the telepath recoil in disgust, she was disappointed. Already preparing for a second probe, Jean was primarily cognizant of phenomena on the psychic plane. She barely even noticed the glob of saliva, nor did it seem important enough for her to bother wiping it off her cheek. The rain would sluice it away.

She reached for Carla’s psyche once again. This time she didn’t try to smash through the shield. Instead, unpleasant though it was to touch, she methodically pried at it, searching for holes, seams, and other weak spots. Dracula’s power pounded away beside her own, hammering the psychic armor as steadily and relentlessly as a piledriver. His essence was a foul thing too, and she was just as glad that, oriented on Carla as she was, she couldn’t perceive it with utter clarity.

She found the relatively vulnerable spots she was seeking.

They weren’t entirely unlike the joints in a suit of metal armor, or the pressure points of the human body. But the shield was so cunningly made that she couldn’t get a grip on any of them to yank them open. Finally she withdrew to catch her breath.

Feeling her departure, Carla laughed wildly. “You can’t do it, can you? The master is too strong for you!”

“Lady,” said Jean, “you couldn’t be more wrong.”

She hurled herself at Carla’s mind a third time, this time in a lightning series of thrusts at the weak spots she’d just identified. Gradually the shield began to resonate, rather the way a bridge shakes if a company of soldiers is foolish enough to march across it in step.

Had Carla been a telepath, trained in psychic combat, she might have been able to manipulate the shield to prevent the stress, like a swordsman deflecting an opponent’s cuts in such a way as to keep them from hacking his buckler apart. But as it was, her defense was purely passive, as if she were simply hidng behind a wall, and if attacked properly, any wall can be demolished.

The shield shattered. Carla screamed in pain and rage. For Jean, still primarily perceiving the psychic world, the shrill cry sounded tinny and far away. She regarded the mindscape of thought, emotion, and memory that suddenly unfurled before her, striving to perceive the order in what, as was sometimes the case in the first split second of contact, appeared to be a chaotic jumble.

Then everything imploded, distorting and folding. Crying out in dismay, Jean clutched at Carla’s essence, but couldn’t hold on to it. In a moment, nothing remained but darkness with a point of crimson light at its center.

The glow expanded, resolving into the image of a man with horns and a pointed tail. A long sword with a golden hilt hung at his side. Nicely done, Belasco said, smiling. Despite all I did to hinder your progress, you and your allies captured Carla, and now you’ve dissolved the rather potent enchant-merit I wove to protect the contents of her mind. What a pity that all your efforts were in vain.

That, replied Phoenix, remains to be seen. She considered attacking Belasco directly now that they were in some sort of psychic communication, but she suspected that he would never have revealed himself unless confident that she was no threat to him in this particular arena. Instead, as surreptitiously as possible, she groped about in the void, trying to find where he’d hidden Carla’s thoughts away from her view,

Belasco chuckled. Spoken like an X-Man. Never say die. Perhaps it won’t even daunt you to learn that the true Rogue has succumbed to my blandishments, and is arriving at my sanctuary even as we speak.

Jean could feel that he was telling the truth, and it made her sick with dismay. It doesn ’t matter, she replied, straggling to believe it. We’re still going to stop you, and we’re going to save her.

I can’t imagine how, the sorcerer said. Or wait, perhaps I can. Conceivably you think that I can’t abide here inside dear Carla’s head, preventing you from riffling her memories, and attend to my business with Rogue at the same time. In point of fact, that’s absolutely correct. But unfortunately for you, in a moment it will cease to be a problem.

My child, Belasco continued, and now Jean could tell that he was addressing Carla, I gave you more power than your undead form was ever meant to bear. At certain moments it has been a heavy burden, has it not?

Yes, master, said the vampire from the emptiness. Jean gazed in that direction, reaching, searching, finally spotting another psyche shimmering in the distance ...

Now, said Belasco, you may lay your burden down.

Perhaps at that moment Jean achieved renewed contact with Carla and felt her surge of terror, or perhaps it was only intuition that warned her of what was about to happen. In any case, she frantically withdrew her awareness back into her own body and screamed, “Push her away!”

Dracula instantly gave Carla a shove. Phoenix encased the female vampire in a telekinetic bubble an instant before Belasco released all the magic with which he’d imbued her, the awesome reservoir of energy which had made her as strong as Rogue, at once.

Jean groaned with the strain of containing the explosion. The flash was as blinding and the boom as deafening as Ororo’s lightning display, and afterwards, not a trace of Carla remained.

“What happened?” demanded Major Jones “Belasco sensed it when I forced my way into her mind,” said Jean. “He appeared there himself and killed her to prevent us from finding out where he’s hiding.”

“Only you got there ahead of him,” said Kitty, “so you already had found out.” She hesitated. “Tell me I’m right.” For a moment, Jean was certain she was going to cry.

Chapter 14

Spastic with the pain of her hunger but still as strong as ever, Rogue nearly tore down the tall, weathered church door before finally managing to fumble it open. Whimpering, she staggered through the shadowy vestibule and down the endless length of the nave, toward the scarlet figure standing behind the bloodstained basalt altar.

Smiling, he let her clamber up onto the dais and kneel before him unassisted, but once she did, he traced a symbol on her brow with the claw on his index finger. The hunger abated, and he lifted her to her feet.

“Welcome,” he said. “Do you know me?”

She took in the ruddy skin and the horns. For a moment, something about his appearance vaguely alarmed her, but then it was all right. “Yes,” she said. “You’re Belasco. You’re my master.”

“Very good,” he said, “And you, I think, are at least as much Helen as Rogue now.”

She had no idea what he was talking about, and yet she did. Perhaps that division in her mind should have troubled her, but as long as the hunger wasn’t twisting her guts, it was easier just to commend herself to his care and not even try to think. “I believe so,” she said.

“Look around,” he said, gesturing toward the pews. Turning, she took in the pale, gaunt figures peering up at her. She supposed that they’d been there right along, but she’d been so frantic to reach Belasco that she hadn’t even noticed them until now.

“See how they envy you your triumph,” the sorcerer murmured. “How they now wish that I had chosen them.” Rogue studied their intent, burning eyes and saw that it was so.

They’d always been her rivals for the master’s affection, but surely it would never be so again. She grinned at them.

“We’ve reached the penultimate stage of our work,” Belasco continued. “A journey to a realm that no one save myself has seen in living memory. A place where we will silence your thirst forever, and transmute the base metal of your being into something infinitely more precious than gold. Will you accompany me?”

“Yes, angel,” she replied. Some of the observers in the nave laughed. She had no idea why, nor did it trouble her.

“Excellent,” Belasco said. He drew his sword. Its rune-graven blade shone with a sickly phosphorescence, and, sensing the malignant power whispering in the blade, she had to repress an urge to flinch from it. At some moment in the past, the weapon might have cut her, although she couldn’t actually recall the occasion. Closing his black eyes, the homed man reverently kissed the sword, raised it high above his head, and finally touched the point to the altar.

The intricately carved stone rumbled and shuddered as if about to break apart, but instead, it flowed into another form, growing taller and narrower, smoother and blacker, until it resembled a doorway into darkness hanging unsupported in the air. A cold draft blew from the other side.

Metal hissed against metal as Belasco returned his sword to its scabbard. He took Rogue’s hand, his talons pricking her skin. “Come,” he said, and escorted her through the opening.

On the other side was a path of sorts, a luminous gray ribbon extending through a void which, at first glance, might have been mistaken for outer space, a blackness begemmed with stars and nebulae. But Rogue could still breathe, and the temperature, while markedly colder than in the ruined church, would still have been tolerable even for an ordinary human.

For a moment all was silent, and then a vast rustling sounded in the depths beneath her feet, a noise that made her think of a swarm of cockroaches crawling over and over one another. For some reason, it was utterly dreadful, and it froze her in her tracks.

Belasco chuckled. “Don’t be afraid. It’s only a sampling of the petty devils that infest the spaces between realities. They wouldn’t dare attempt to harm the chosen one of the Elder Gods, and I’d scour them from the face of the darkness if they did.” As if in response to the threat, the scratching, seething sound subsided. Reassured, Rogue allowed him to escort her onward.

“When you gaze upon the Dark Ones,” Belasco continued, “then may you rightly cower in fear. I know you’ve encountered some extraordinary things during your time with the X-Men, but nothing can have prepared you for this. The sheer size of them! The unfathomable intricacy of their forms, and the suffocating aura of their power!”

An opalescent shimmering appeared in the blackness ahead. To Rogue, it looked as if the floating path would lead right up to it.

“But you know,” mused the sorcerer, “as awesome as their bodies are, their most profound grandeur lies in the quality of their spirits. They know I adore them. I’ve spent centuries striving to liberate them, and during all that time have probably represented their only hope of release. The first time I tried and failed to return them to Earth, they punished me by allowing me to languish in suspended animation for centuries. The second, they imprisoned me in Limbo. Still later, when they judged that Illyana wouid make them a better servant than myself, they immediately stripped me of my power, only restoring it after she spurned them. They’re perfect, you see, in a way that we who come from human stock can only dream of. Perfectly devoid of love or mercy. Perfectly selfish, ruthless, and cruel. That purity, the absolute truth of their maleficence, is the most sublime and beautiful thing in all creation.”

Somewhere deep inside herself, Rogue thought, He's completely insane, but the insight didn’t trouble her. It was simply a string of words, with no emotion and very little intrinsic meaning attached.

One moment, the shimmer ahead still seemed a long way off, as if they might have to walk for hours to reach it. Then, abruptly, seemingly in the blink of an eye, they were standing directly in front of it. It was made up of thousands of complex, luminous, multicolored designs floating in the air. Rogue vaguely supposed that they must be magical symbols or talismans, crowded so closely together that they seemed to form a solid, three-dimensional structure. With the narrow tunnel leading through the base of it, the glowing rectangular mass reminded her of the barbican of Banshee’s castle in Ireland.

“Behold the wards of the thrice-cursed Agamotto,” said Belasco. “The locks on the door of the Dark Ones’ prison. Tonight we two will break them open.”

Rogue felt a dull twinge of curiosity, and perhaps another emotion too fleeting for her even to identify it. “How?” she asked. “And why do you need me?”

Belasco smiled. “Good question. I didn’t realize there was still that much intellectual activity inside that poor, ravaged head of yours.” They proceeded down the tunnel. “The answer is that like many barriers, Agamotto’s prison is stronger on one side than the other. If the Elder Gods were outside it, on Earth, they and I, conjuring together, could dissolve it. The problem being, of course, that they can’t get to our world because they’re trapped inside.

“However, as I studied the X-Men, it occurred to me that a creature like yourself could become the avatar of the Dark Ones. Visit them, take on their personae and powers, and carry them to Earth to serve their needs.” Even after she became their vessel, Agamotto’s magic would fail to recognize the correspondence, and so have no power to detain her.

“It would have been convenient if I could simply have transformed one of my followers into a suitable tool, but that wasn’t possible. I knew how to replicate your appearance, your strength, and your power of flight, as I did with dear, martyred Carla, but not your unique form of vampirism. Thus I had no recourse but to enlist you in my cause, and deal with the inevitable complications—your fellow X-Men—as best I could.” He grinned. “Fortunately, I’ve handled them very well indeed, and I trust you’ll agree that the fact they tried and failed to stop us makes our triumph all the sweeter.”

They reached the end of the passage, then stepped into the world beyond.

The first thing Rogue noticed was the choking stench, seemingly consisting of the stinks of every foul, corrosive, or rotting substance known to exist. The second was the heavy liquid noise, suggestive of viscous sludge flowing and dripping, that sounded all around her. The third was the way the ground shifted beneath her boots.

But initially, she could see very little, because she seemed to have stepped into a realm of absolute darkness, with no celestial bodies whatsoever shining in the ebon sky. If not for the light of Agamotto’s magic gleaming behind her, she would have been completely blind. Even as it was, it took time for her eyes to adapt sufficiently for her to make out the chaotic jumble of shapes rearing up around her.

At first she took them for hillocks, heaps of refuse, derelict buildings, or a mixture of all three. Only gradually, meanwhile doubting her own perception, did she recognize them as living creatures.

Their shapes were irregular and complex, labyrinthine networks of lumps, maws, and twitching limbs, so much so that it was virtually impossible to tell where one god’s flesh ended and another’s began. Many of them looked raw and ragged, with slimy gaps and gashes in their substance, as if some plague were eating them away. The surface beneath Rogue’s feet shuddered once again, and, looking down, she realized she was standing on one of them, that their sprawling masses completely covered the ground. Or perhaps there wasn’t any ground, just extensions of their bodies reaching out and out and down and down.

Belasco pointed. “There’s Syxra, Mother of Knives,” he whispered rapturously. “Zo, Who Makes the Dead Weep. Kle-jan Kaa, Devourer of Angels and Breaker of Cities. Perhaps now you comprehend how I will end your suffering. For how could you ever hunger again after you’ve gorged on the essences of beings as full of power as these?”

The sorcerer drew his sword and swung it over his head. Maybe it was his way of paying homage to his deities, or simply of attracting their attention. “Great ones!” he cried. “As I vowed, your hour is at hand. This is the woman who, branded with your shadows, will help me to free you from this dungeon.”

Across the landscape of flesh, various organs and protuberances pivoted or oozed in Rogue’s direction. Few of them were recognizable as eyes or ears, but they were probably sensory organs of one sort or another.

Now that the Dark Ones were peering at her, she felt their terrible strength, the overwhelming aura Belasco had spoken of, in full measure. In fact, a sudden stab of terror pierced the numbing fog in her head. Crying out, she recoiled.

Belasco laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “You’re about to be blessed as no mortal has ever been blessed before. I’d change places with you in an instant if only I could.”

For a moment, her panic abated. Then a hundred arms extended, some tentacular, some forked, some bearing misshapen hands, lamprey mouths, or stranger appendages, all reaching for her, and the fear surged back. Abruptly she didn’t care what the master said. She knew in the depths of her being that what was about to happen to her was wrong, vile, a peril that threatened her very soul, and nothing mattered but getting away.

Spinning, she leapt into the air and flew toward the mouth of the magical tunnel. Masses of flesh enveloped her like huge hands clapping together. She struggled madly, but couldn’t break free. The Elder Gods poured their alien minds into her, a tide that dissolved Rogue and Helen alike like a wave of acid. She heard Belasco laugh, and then she was gone.

Magic thrilling up her spine, singing along her nerves, Amanda silently invoked the Muses Under the Mountain: Vala, Who Dreams, Dor, Who Sees, and Ogri, Who Speaks. Tendrils of light sizzled from the Gypsy’s fingertips, merging to form a silver oval floating in the air in front of her.

Amanda stared into the mirror, commanding it to show her Belasco. For a moment, shadows swam in its depth, and then it exploded. The tinkling crash sounded exactly like real glass shattering, but the shards melted into nothingness before they reached the floor. The backlash from the unsuccessful conjuration hit her like a punch to the solar plexus. She grunted with the shock, and her knees went rubbery. Kurt sprang to her side and gripped her arm to support her.

The two of them, their comrades, and many of the federal operatives were still at the hospital. Either the facility was underutilized or it had moved out a number of its non-critical patients in expectation of the flood, but in any case, Major Jones had managed to commandeer an empty floor. The X-Men and Dracula were currently lounging about in a relatively small, open ward equipped with blue plastic curtains which could be drawn at need to enclose its dozen beds. The room smelled faintly of ammonia.

Most of her companions did their best to hide their disappointment at Amanda's latest failed divination, but she could read it in their faces even so. Only Jean, psi scanning for Belasco or Rogue herself, her forehead furrowed in concentration, failed to react. It was possible that she hadn’t even noticed.

At that moment, Amanda couldn’t stand to have her friends looking at her in all her uselessness. “I need some fresh air,” she mumbled. “Then I’ll come back and try again.” She pulled free of Kurt’s grasp and fled through the door into the hallway beyond, a stark institutional corridor with fluorescent lighting and walls painted a pale, unpleasant green.

The door opened once more. As she turned, she expected to see Dracula, but instead it was Kurt. Perhaps the vampire felt that he’d already made his case as effectively as he could, and believed it pointless to remonstrate with her any further.

“Don’t be discouraged,” said Kurt. “Everything will work out.”

She knew he was trying to help, but the remark seemed so blithely out of sync with reality that it annoyed her even so. “How?” she snapped.

“You or Jean will find Belasco. Or if you don’t, and he brings the Dark Ones through, then all of us—the X-Men, Excalibur, the Avengers, Spider-Man, and everybody else with peculiar talents and a pair of tights—will team up and chase them back to where they came from.”

Amanda shook her head. “You don’t understand. Jean and I have been scanning and scrying all day. There’s no reason for it to suddenly start working now. What’s more, there are dozens of Dark Ones, maybe hundreds, maybe thousands, and they’re gods, with all that implies. If they ever make it back to Earth, they’ll slaughter all us so-called super heroes as easily as you could stamp on a swarm of ants.”

“You assume so, but you’ve never actually seen them. Perhaps legend makes them out to be more formidable than they truly are.”

“How I wish I could believe that. But these are primordial entities, beings from the dawn of time, and every mystic knows that such creatures are more powerful than any that arose later. It took Agamotto the All-Seeing himself to cage them, and even he needed trickery and luck. The only way to

deal with them now is to keep the cage locked.” She took a deep breath. “Which is why I’d better let Dracula teach me the Darkhold magic, and pray that it’s not too late already.” Kurt glared at her. “No. I won’t permit it.”

“It’s not your decision.”

“Do you truly believe Dracula’s assurance that accepting his gift would only change you a little? Because I don’t. Remember how often meddling with dark sorcery has nearly destroyed your mother.”

“I know it will transform me thoroughly and horribly,” Amanda replied somberly. “You could say it’s going to kill my soul. But with the whole world at risk, I have to be willing to pay the price.”

“Your life belongs to you,” Kurt said, taking her hands, “and you have the right to risk it as you and I have done countless times before. But your soul belongs to God, and He forbids you to throw it away, no matter what the reason.” She smiled sadly and squeezed his thick, white-gloved fingers. “I know that’s what your faith teaches, darling, just as I know that on one level, it’s entirely true. But I’m a sorceress, even if only a puny one whose best trick is simply popping around from place to place. My view of the universe is darker and more complicated than yours. I need you to help me be brave now, and afterward—assuming we’re lucky enough to achieve an afterward—to make sure that the Amanda who will take my place doesn’t hurt anyone.”

Kurt’s features twisted in anguish. “I won’t—

The door opened, and Piotr stepped into the hall, his huge shoulders and high, gleaming head a tight fit.

Kurt rounded on him as if the Russian were the cause of all their troubles. “This is a private conversation,” the smaller man gritted.

Colossus nodded. “And I think I know what it is a conversation about. The offer that Dracula made to Amanda.” “I’m ordering you,” said Kurt, “go back inside.”

“You may be the leader of Excalibur,” replied Piotr, “but that doesn’t mean you can stop the rest of us from speaking our minds. Amanda, you know how badly I want to find Belasco. I’ve never wanted anything more. I have to find him, for Illyana’s sake.”

The sorceress nodded.

“And now we know we have to track him down before the night is out, to save the world. Still...” Piotr faltered, then scowling, evidently at his own reluctance, forged ahead. “Still, I’ve decided I agree with Kurt. I don’t want you to use the Darkhold magic.”

Kurt gaped up at their giant comrade. Amanda suspected she looked just as astonished. It was the last thing that she’d expected Piotr to say.

“You’re my friend,” Colossus said. “I can’t let you poison your spirit. What is the whole human race anyway, except for a collection of spirits? If it’s precious enough for us to fight for, then each of its parts must be precious as well. As Kurt said aboard the Runner, we must have faith in ourselves. We must believe we’ll find another answer.”

Amanda felt a knot compounded of guilt, fear, and desperation loosen in her chest. She couldn’t quite say how Piotr had managed to convince her when her own lover couldn’t, but his words had tipped a balance inside her. “Okay,” she sighed, “you two win. No black magic. I just pray that we don’t al! live to regret it.”

Colossus gave Kurt a wry smile. “Do you still wish I’d minded my own business, tovarischT’

Nightcrawler reached up and clapped him on the shoulder. “No, mein freund, I do not.”

Logan stuck his head out into the hallway. “Break time’s over,” he growled. “I’m callin’ a council of war.”

The three members of Excalibur quickly followed him back into the ward. Wolverine strode over to Jean, still sitting more or less entranced on a stool in the nurse’s station, put his hand on her shoulder, and gave her a gentle shake. ‘ ‘Snap out of it, babe,” he said. “We need you, too.”

Phoenix blinked and ran her fingers through her tousled auburn hair. “All right. I was about ready to stop for a minute anyway.”

“You can stop for longer than that,” Logan said. “Amanda’s hoodoo and your psi scanning ain’t gettin’ us anywhere. Maybe it would if we still had a mini-Cerebro to help you zero in on Rogue, but we don’t. Our only chance is a fresh approach.”

“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” said Scott. As was often the case, he was sitting beside Jean. “But do you have another plan, other than just hunting at random? Because that’s not likely to work in the short time w'e’ve got left.”

“Yup,” Logan said. “We got to narrow down the search area, and I’m hopin’ we can. Jeannie, you did get inside Carla’s mind, right?”

“Yes,” Phoenix said, “but as I explained, Belasco appeared there a second after I did, and hid her thoughts and memories away from me.”

“At least,” Logan persisted, “you had that first second. And even afterward, you really were still linked to her mind, weren’t you? Belasco only created the illusion that you weren’t. Otherwise you would’ve just been back inside your own skull again.”    -

“Yes,” said Jean, frowning thoughtfully, obviously trying to divine where her friend was headed with this, “but how does that help us?”

“I’m guessin’,” Logan replied, “that during the time when your minds were hooked together, something must have leaked across to you, even if it’s buried in your unconscious.” He pulled the map of Natchez and the surrounding area from his belt and spread it on top of the Formica counter in front of her.

Everyone else drew closer to see what he meant to do with it. Wolverine looked at Storm and said, “No, ’Roro. 1 don’t want you to watch this—yet.”

“As you wish,” the windrider said, obediently retreating and turning her back.

“Okay,” said Logan, orienting on Phoenix once more, “you look at the map and point to Belasco’s hideout.”

Jean peered at him uncertainly. “You said it yourself. If I acquired any impressions at all from the impostor, they’re submerged so deeply—”

“Listen to your intuition,” Logan said. “Just trust your gut and give us your best guess.”

“You can do it,” Kitty said.

“All right.” Phoenix stared intently at the map for a time, then hesitantly pointed at the northeast quadrant. “Somewhere in here. Maybe.”

“Good,” Logan said. “Okay, ’Roro, now you’re up.”

The willowy black woman turned, “I think I can guess what you have in mind for me. When I was trying to quell the storm, I perceived that it was in some way unnatural, but I didn’t know that Belasco’s sorcery was responsible. I do know it now, and you’re wondering if I can sense at what point the weather-changing influence is rising into the sky.” The Canadian nodded. “Right on the money. Can you?” “I don’t know,” Ororo replied, “If the magic was anything resembling a tight beam, or my own power, I would surely have spotted it before. But I’ll try.”

She took a deep breath, threw back her head, and raised her arms. The air moaned and stirred, playing with the ends of Ororo’s hair. Outside, the rain drummed harder for a moment. Lightning flared, followed instantly by a clap of thunder loud enough to rattle the glass in the windows.

Ororo lowered her hands, walked to the counter, and indicated the central area of the northern half of the map. “Like Jean, I can’t be sure, but the source of the magic might be somewhere in here. Assuming that it is, I may be able to pin it down a little further once I’m up in the open sky.”

Nodding, Wolverine picked up a pencil and drew a circle on the map. “You say Belasco’s somewhere in here.” He sketched a second ring, an arc of which cut through the first. “Jeannie, you say he’s around here.”

“And the region where the two circles overlap,” said Scott, “is where we’re going to look.”

“Yep,” said Logan, “except that we’re not done whittling it down yet.” To Amanda’s surprise, he turned to her. “Your turn, darlin’.”

Feeling useless once more, Amanda grimaced. “You’ve already seen that I can’t locate Belasco. His defenses are too strong.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Wolverine. “The creep out-muscled you. No shame in that, considering how many centuries of practice he’s got on you. The thing is, he hasn’t taken away your savvy about how magic works, so let’s use that. Whal kind of a place would he choose for his hideout?”

“Somewhere at least a little isolated,” Amanda said, pondering, “where there wouldn’t be a lot of noise to disturb his concentration. Beyond that... ley lines!”

“Those currents of energy that supposedly run through the Earth,” said Scott.

“There’s no ‘supposedly’ about it,” Amanda replied. “Of course, Belasco’s magic primarily comes from the Dark Ones. But every sorcerer, whatever other resources he commands, occasionally draws some power from the natural environment to power his spells. And we tend to establish our sanctuaries on or at least near ley lines to make it easier.”

“Can you point out the lines in the search area?” Cyclops asked.

“Absolutely,” Amanda said, pleased to be asked at last to perform a feat that lay well within her capabilities. “It would help if I had a pendulum.”

“Here,” said Dracula, producing the gold and onyx pendant from within his funereal clothing. “You might as well use it for something.”

•She took it from his pallid hand, the power slumbering inside it tingling up her fingers. Then she drew and exhaled a long, slow breath, centering herself, poised the pendant over the map, and silently bade it reveal what she wanted to know.

Her magic guided her hand an inch farther down the map. The glittering piece of onyx abruptly swept back and forth on its chain, slashing from southwest to northeast and back again.

“You got it!” Kitty said,

“Wait,” Amanda replied. “We aren’t done yet.” The pendant ceased its vigorous, purposeful swinging, and her magic guided her hand almost to the top of the map. The black gem swept back and forth once more, this time defining a line that ran due east and west. When the motion abated, she sensed that the divination had concluded.

“Two lines,” said Scott.

“Yes,” Amanda said. She handed the pendant back to Dracula before the power inside it, singing to the magic in her own soul, could further tempt her to hang on to it. Judging from his contemptuous smile, he understood exactly what she was feeling. “If they intersected inside the search area, I’d say, look for Belasco at that spot. As it is, all I can tell you is that he may be somewhere along one or the other.”

“That’s better than we had before,” said Logan, drawing the ley lines on the map. He turned to Scott. “That was my last bright idea.”

“Then it’s time to start the actual search,” Cyclops replied.

“What about Major Jones and her people?” asked Kurt.

“Jones seems all right,” said Scott, “but she got skeptical when we started talking about the supernatural, and she never actually promised she wouldn’t detain us. She’s almost certainly been in touch with her superiors by now, and who knows what orders they’ve given her?”

“Her superior’s Sean Morgan,” Wolverine said, “and trust me, if he wanted us detained, we’d know about it by now.”

“Fair enough,” Scott said with a nod, “but even if SAFE is willing to cooperate with us, they’d only slow us down on the trail, and I doubt that they’d be of much use against Belasco and his vampires when we do find them. So let’s sneak out of here and leave them behind.”

Logan decided he hated the pounding rain. Not because it battered and chilled him, even though it did. It had washed the city clean. As he prowled down the deserted sidewalk, past a string of antique shops, restaurants, and boutiques, he slipped into one recessed area after another, looking for a patch of pavement or a door handle that was still dry, always to no avail. Even his hypersensitive nose had yet to find a trace of scent.

Periodically he heard the others report over his GCS Unit. Generally, it was to indicate that thus far, they’d come up empty too. Occasionally, however, one of his friends said something so vague and tentative that it was almost more frustrating than when they offered nothing at all. Ororo was fairly sure that the epicenter of the weather disruption was east of the river. Looking at a seedy bar, Jean had experienced a powerful sense of deja vu, and suspected that Carla might frequently or recently have passed by the same location.

Logan could scarcely believe how quickly the minutes were ticking away, and how slowly the search was progressing— if, indeed, the seekers were truly making progress at all. He’d thought he had some good ideas back in the hospital, but maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe Jeannie. Ororo, and Amanda hadn’t had the ability to get the team pointed in the right direction after all. It wasn’t like he actually understood how their abilities worked. Maybe the X-Men were miles away from where they needed to be. Maybe the best approach would have been simply to let Phoenix and Amanda go on scanning like they were before.

If he’d screwed this operation up, if the Dark Ones came back because of him—

Scowling, he pushed the useless thought out of his mind. Pick an attack, then execute it with confidence and commitment. That was the only way to win any fight, including this one.

Suddenly he caught a whiff of odor, the same familiar yet altered scent he’d detected at the stable. An instant later, it was gone. Sniffing like a bloodhound, casting about, he finally picked it up again. Evidently Rogue had touched down here for a moment and, leaning, pressed her hand against the red door of an insurance office.

Logan quickly dug out and activated his radio. “I found a patch of Rogue’s scent up here on Wilson Road,” he said. Overhead, lightning blazed, and thunder boomed.

“Acknowledged,” Scott replied. “Okay, people, we’re giving up on the southern ley line. Everyone who’s been searching there, come north.”

Wolverine continued up the street. In a stairwell leading down to a basement jazz club, he smelled the putrid funk of a vampire. He reported his discovery to his teammates, then moved on once more.

A minute later, Jean swooped down from the sky. As soon as he saw her face, he knew. “You found it,” he said.

“Yes,*⁴ she said. “Since you suddenly seemed to be having all the luck, I decided it would make sense for me to look around in your vicinity. And as soon as I saw the place—an abandoned church—I simply knew, even though I still can’t detect anyone inside.”

“Fly me there. I’ll keep watch and radio the others while you go pick up Cyke and bring him to the party.”

“Okay.” She levitated off the wet pavement, then lifted the Canadian in her telekinetic grasp. “Maybe it’s silly, considering that entire human race is in danger, but now that we’ve come this far, all I can think about is the argument that almost split us apart. Can we subdue Rogue without hurting her? Can I end the possession? Or are we going to have to strike to kill?”

“If we can knock out Belasco, maybe that’ll solve our problems. Guess we’ll find out in a few minutes.”

When Amanda teleported Piotr into the alley, Logan was perched atop a dented garbage can lighting a cheroot. Across the street stood a dilapidated red brick church, its spacious, overgrown grounds surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. She studied the structure with her mystical senses and detected nothing, but that was peculiar in and of itself. Any place of worship ought to give off at least a faint shimmer of spiritual power, unless someone had wrapped it in some kind of shield. “Jean’s right,” she said. “This is Belasco’s sanctuary.”

“I never doubted it,” Logan replied, exhaling pungent smoke, “ ’specially since I smell more vampire stink in this alley. Still, it’s nice to hear that you agree, considerin’ that I haven’t seen or heard any activity over there.”

“Logan, you and I should go in now,” said Piotr, rain rattling on his steel body.

The Canadian grinned. “And they call me reckless. Nope, we’ll wait on the others. They’ll be here soon.”

“The door to the Dark Ones’ prison could be opening this very instant!”

“If it is, do you think the two of us could fight our way through a bunch of bloodsuckers all by ourselves in time to stop it? Most likely, we’d just get killed and warn Belasco to expect the rest of the gang at the same time. It’s better if the whole team goes in together, like Cyke ordered.”

“But—”    “

Logan gazed up at his hulking teammate. “I know how you feel, Petey. I cared about Illyana too, remember? But you can’t go crazy on us, not with all the chips on the table. We’re countin’ on you to handle yourself like a pro.”

Colossus grimaced. “Very well.”

Crouched, his yellow eyes gleaming, Kurt emerged from the darkness. The smell of brimstone indicated that he’d just teleported in. Soon, Phoenix floated down from the sky with Cyclops and Shadowcat in tow. Storm appeared half a minute later, riding a wind that made the rain fly horizontally and blew refuse clattering down the alley. Dracula arrived moments after her, his enormous wings melting into the folds of his cloak even as he landed.

“Let’s do it,” Cyclops said. Logan unsheathed his claws, and Kurt, his saber.

The team headed across the street, Piotr striding along in front as if it was a struggle not to break into a sprint and leave his companions behind. He effortlessly yanked the wrought-iron gate off its hinges and laid it in the long, wet grass.

They crossed the lawn, then ascended the concrete steps leading to the row of triangular-arched doors in the fagade of the church. In another second, they’d be fighting to save the Earth. The prospect was terrifying, and yet, at the same time, it didn’t feel quite real. It never did, and Amanda suspected she should be grateful. Perhaps it was that fleeting, dreamlike sensation that gave her the courage to hurl herself into the fray.

Piotr swung his huge, gleaming fist, a gust of wind howled, and Scott’s optic blast blazed. All of the doors crashed open at once, and the team strode into the vestibule. More vulnerable to physical assault than many of her companions, Amanda brought up the rear, but even so, her first glimpse of the interior of Belasco’s lair was enough to make her gasp in dismay.

As she’d expected, the undead, lean men and women with pale skin and shining eyes, stood or sat about the nave. What she hadn’t anticipated was the horde of demons and elemen-tals—no two alike, each hideous in its own way—that prowled, crawled, squatted, or hovered there as well. Evidently Belasco’s magic had somehow enticed them from their native realms to the physical plane. Perhaps they intended to start jockeying for the favor of the Dark Ones as soon as the deities returned.

Sword in hand, chanting, Belasco himself stood in the desecrated apse, behind a bloodstained basalt altar flanked by grotesque tentacular statues. A rotting corpse nailed to an inverted cross hung on the wall behind him.

Another chanting figure stood by the left-hand wall midway down the church. Her voice changed from second to second, from a roar to a buzz to a shrill whine, but was never entirely human. Her body was almost equally fluid, constantly oozing and flowing, changing color, putting forth limbs and organs of unknown function, then drawing them in once more. If not for the tattered uniform and shock of brown, white-streaked hair, Amanda might not have recognized the abomination as anything human, let alone her friend Rogue, now manifestly inhabited by the personae of several of the Elder Gods.

Yet none of this, ghastly though it was, was what so alarmed Amanda that she momentarily froze. Rather, she was reacting to the spectacle of the intricate and immensely powerful work of sorcery unfolding beneath the lofty ceiling of the church. A structure of whorls and spindles of radiant energy meshing as precisely and inexorably as the clockwork mechanism of a time bomb. Magic that, in a matter of seconds, would dissolve Agamotto’s wards.

Amanda had no time to try and devise a proper counterspell, no time for elaborate gestures or incantations. As the X-Men in the front rank commenced the attack and the foul occupants of the chamber lunged at them, she simply threw the raw force of her will and mystical might at Belasco’s construct, commanding it to stop. The structure of light flickered, some of its components twitching out of perfect alignment.

A jolt of pain, no less excruciating because its source lay on the metaphysical plane, wracked her. If the homed man’s ritual resembled a great machine, then her own magic, which was ultimately the stuff of her own soul, was now like a foreign object caught in the gears.

She must have cried out, because an instant later Jean and Kurt were beside her. “What’s wrong?” Nightcrawler asked.

“Belasco’s magic is almost finished,” Amanda said through a clenched jaw. “I can hold it back for a little while, but it’s going to do its job unless the rest of you take him down—and Rogue, too. She’s got the spirits of several of the Dark Ones inside her and she’s helping him conjure, not that they really even have to do that anymore. At this point, their will power alone is enough to drive the spell to completion.” “Understood,” Jean said. “I’ll tell the others telepathically. But you can’t defend yourself, can you? Someone—”

“Kurt and I will guard her,” said Kitty, trotting up to position herself in front of Amanda, her uniform already tom and a bloody gash on her shoulder. “Go help Rogue,” Phoenix levitated and flew into the nave.

The intruders advanced, and, shouting, baying, roaring, and gibbering, Belasco’s followers surged to meet them. Some of the X-Men were driven back toward the vestibule at once, but not Piotr. He marched down the aisle like a tank, smashing aside a female vampire; a reeking, biting creature resembling a leprous, two-headed harpy; and an immense black hornet with faceted eyes that almost hypnotized him before he managed to wrench his gaze away.

Jean’s telepathic voice spoke inside his head, warning that both Belasco and Rogue had to be neutralized, and quickly. I’ll get Belasco, Piotr thought. I promise I will, Illy ana.

Above his head, Ororo darted this way and that. She was obviously trying for a clear shot at Belasco, but flying demons and vampires did their best to interpose themselves between the mutant and her intended target. Finally the wind shrieked, momentarily clearing a path through the air. Storm extended her hand. Sneering, Belasco flicked his sword in a casual gesture. When her lightning leapt at him, an oval shield of scarlet light popped into existence to block it. The magician’s minions assailed Ororo anew, driving her back.

From the comer of his eye, Piotr glimpsed coiling strands of pearly vapor drifting along the base of the right-hand wall. It was Dracula in his mist form, and the Russian had to admire his sense of tactics. In that insubstantial, relatively inconspicuous shape, the vampire should be able to reach Belasco without having to batter his way through the latter s pet monsters. Indeed, in the chaos of the battle, they might not even notice him.

Unfortunately, when Dracula was halfway up the nave, Belasco himself did sense his enemy’s approach. Suddenly pivoting in the vampire’s direction, he murmured a brief incantation and pointed his sword at him. The strands of mist twisted together, thickened, darkened, and in an instant became Dracula’s solid human body. The lord of the undead collapsed, thrashing as if he were having an epileptic seizure. A creature like an ape with the scales and head of a reptile immediately pounced on him.

Another vampire, this one an adolescent with shoulder-length yellow hair, sprang at Piotr with fangs bared. The Russian grabbed him and threw him across the church. Then a demon a head taller and even more massive than himself appeared to block his path.

Ponderous as its crudely formed body appeared, the creature moved fluidly, as if it were made not simply of dully glowing orange stone but of magma. And as it strode closer, Colossus felt the fierce heat coming off it, just as he noticed the trail of smoldering footprints it branded into the floor.

Piotr hurled himself at the demon, driving his first punch into its chest and the second into its faceless lump of a head.

His metal fists bashed dents in the demon’s substance, but failed to slow its advance. The monster threw its arms around him, hoisted him off his feet, and then collapsed on top of him.

Its weight couldn’t crush him, nor was the pressure of its arms likely to do so, in and of themselves. But buried beneath it, he felt the heat of its body soaking into his own. It didn’t quite hurt yet, but the pain would come soon enough, as his steel flesh softened into something that his adversary could flatten or rip apart.

Piotr struggled frantically, striking, shoving, gouging, twisting, using every jujitsu, wrestling, and street-fighting move that anyone had ever taught him. Meanwhile, his shirt charred away, and a hot ache like a sunburn spread across his chest and face. Finally he managed to loosen the demon’s embrace and squirm free.

The creature immediately attempted to grab him again. He narrowly avoided its clutching hand and scrambled to his feet. The demon rose as well.

He couldn’t let it grapple him a second time, which meant that he couldn’t get close enough to pound on it with his fists. Pivoting, he grabbed the end of one of the pews and jerked it upward.

The long bench broke in the middle, but half of it tore away from the floor, enough to increase his reach by serving as a club. He battered the demon with it.

The wood immediately began to smash apart, a process hastened by the monster’s hammering fists. In a matter of seconds, there was nothing left, and though the demon’s body was now scarred from head to toe with pits and gouges, it continued to press the attack, seemingly as powerful as before.

Colossus uprooted another section of pew, and, bellowing, slammed it down on the magma creature’s head with every iota of his strength. The demon’s skull splashed into a spatter of pebbles and droplets of lava. Its body crumpled to the floor.

Piotr turned back toward the front of the church. The way was momentarily clear before him, and Belasco was leering at him.

“Come on, then,” said the sorcerer, his soft, mocking voice somehow audible despite the cacophony of the battle. “This is your chance. Claim your vengeance if you can.”

Piotr threw the pew at Belasco, then instantly charged. The warlock would have to avoid the missile somehow, and perhaps that would buy Colossus the time he needed to get on top of him.

But the hurtling bench simply vanished when Piotr was still several yards from the altar. Belasco said, “Break him.” A seething orb of shadow appeared in the air in front of him then, flying low, leapt at the mutant.

Piotr dodged, a split second too slow. The magic projectile smashed into his shin, producing a burst of pain and knocking him down. He tried to leap up, but could only flounder helplessly. Evidently the attack had broken his leg.

“So much for your vow to poor little Illyana,” Belasco said. Half a dozen of his inhuman followers surged at Colossus.

One hard-won step at a time, Scott, Logan, and Jean battled their way toward Rogue. Cyclops fired his optic blast again and again, as quickly as he could, battering one gibbering devil or hissing vampire after another. Crouched, pivoting this way and that. Wolverine slashed at any adversary who managed to lunge close enough. Hovering above their heads, Phoenix attacked Belasco’s flying servants with mental bolts and her telekinesis.

So far, Scott knew, they were at least holding their own, but he wondered just how long they could keep it up. He only had a finite reserve of solar energy to drive his mutant power. He very seldom exhausted it, but it had been known to happen. Jean’s psi could run out of steam as well. Even Logan, with his extraordinary metabolism, wore himself out occasionally. And as soon as any one of them faltered, this army of horrors might well take them all down.

Don’t think about it, he told himself. Just do your job.

Another optic blast slammed a vampire in lupine form into a demon resembling a huge, six-legged panther, then smashed the both of them into the wall. With the creatures out of the way, he had a clear shot at the flowing, chancrous thing that Rogue had become. Regretting the necessity, but without hesitation, he fired at her.

The scarlet ray had no visible effect. Frowning, he fired several more. By the end, he was discharging the most devastating blasts of which he was capable, still without even knocking Rogue off her feet.

Grimacing, he went back to fighting Belasco’s minions and helping his teammates maneuver into position to attempt to deal with Rogue. Finally they drew close enough for Wolverine to cut a final trio of demons out of his way, then dart in and attack the possessed woman herself.

His adamantium claws rang against her body, further shredding her uniform but not even nicking the squirming chameleon skin beneath. Tentacles erupted from her face and shot at him. Dodging them with uncanny grace and speed, he attacked even more savagely than before, but again to no avail. Still chanting, Rogue swung her right arm in a backhanded blow, and he hopped back just far enough to avoid it. But the limb lengthened in midsweep, catching him by surprise. Rogue would surely have tagged him and drained his vitality if Jean hadn’t snatched him back with her psychokinesis.

“Our big argument was for nothin’,” growled Wolverine, gutting a triple-homed devil that had been slinking in on Scott’s flank. “With the Elder Gods inside her, we couldn’t kill her even if we were willing to try.”

Then it’s up to me, said Jean, speaking mind to mind. Cover me.

She stunned a snarling, gray-winged vampire with a mental bolt, tumbling it from the air and out of her way. That accomplished, she melted away the unstable molecules of her glove, dove at Rogue, and deliberately pressed her fingers against the possessed woman’s heaving, flowing face.

Rogue stopped chanting and stumbled backward. Jean collapsed in a heap at her feet. At once, more of Belasco’s servants lunged at her.

Scott frantically bashed them backward with a high-speed succession of optic blasts. Under the cover of the barrage, Logan sprang forward, snatched Jean up, carried her away from Rogue and over to Cyclops, and set her on the floor again. Standing over her, the two men fought madly to hold the onrushing monsters back.

Scott couldn’t tell if his wife was breathing, and their mind link had gone dead. He tried not to think about the fact that he and Wolverine could well be defending a corpse.

Kitty smiled, because the next demon that charged her had a long spear with a razor-edged, gleaming black head that resembled polished obsidian. Right at the moment, as the superficial wound she’d already sustained demonstrated, she was in urgent need of a weapon. She brushed the point aside with a geden-barai downward sweep, then wailed a split second for the toadlike creature’s own momentum to bring it into striking range. As soon as it did, she snapped punches at its bulging orange eyes.

The demon squealed and stumbled. Shadowcat grabbed the shaft of the spear, wrenched the weapon from her attacker’s webbed fingers, and used it to club the thing. That knocked it reeling backward far enough for her to drive the business end of the lance deep into its thorax. The devil melted into a torrent of slime.

Somewhere deep inside herself, the part of her that was still just a girl from Deerfield, Illinois and not a battle-hardened bujin winced. Ordinarily she hated killing or maiming anything. But when she was up against monsters from hell, and the whole world was in danger, she was willing to make an exception.

Lifting the spear into a high guard, she pivoted toward the front of the church, just in time to meet the attack of two more demons, one resembling an immense, buzzing mosquito and the other, a headless man with a leering, cackling madman’s face in the center of his chest.

From that point on, the pressure never let up. Her mind calm, her actions flowing without conscious thought, Kitty spun in an intricate circular dance, stabbing, cutting, parrying, and sweeping, drawing on everything she knew of the ways of the yari, the naginata, and the bo. Periodically, some hideous thing would leap inside her guard, and she’d phase to avoid its rending talons or snapping jaws, but she couldn’t do it often or remain a wraith for longer than a second. Because when she was intangible, she couldn’t hold the monsters away from Amanda.

Beside her, Kurt cut and thrust with his saber, and tripped his opponents by grabbing their ankles with his tail. Sometimes he parried their blows. Sometimes he evaded them with somersaults, flips, rolls, and prodigious leaps that might leave him clinging momentarily to the wall. Sometimes he teleported out of harm’s way with a muffled report and a burst of sul-furous smoke. But like Kitty, he couldn’t be as mobile as he no doubt would have preferred, for fear of exposing his lover to an attack.

A gigantic white centipede reared at Shadowcat, its serrated mandibles gnashing. It swayed aside to dodge her first thrust, and by the time she scored with her second, a gray, skeletal thing with eye sockets full of fire was lunging at her with a curved dagger in each withered hand.

She phased to avoid the blades, started to pivot and swing the spear into line for an attack, and then twin bolts of flame leapt from her foe’s fleshless countenance, struck her, blistered her, and knocked her down. The skeleton pounced at her.

The demon’s own ability to phase had taken her completely by surprise, but her trained reflexes saved her. Rolling, she narrowly avoided the skeletal creature’s knives, which plunged without resistance into the floor. They both scrambled up, but she was a split second quicker, and snapped the devil’s skull from its spine with a horizontal slash of the spear.

Yet even as she did so, she saw that she’d remained intangible too long. Other monsters were closing in on Amanda. Becoming solid, she engaged two of them, then glimpsed the billowing gray mist at the sorceress’s feet. The strands of vapor swirled upward and became a gaunt, shaven-headed, redeyed young man with rings in his pointed ear. He bared his fangs and reached for the Gypsy’s throat.

Shadowcat drove her opponents back a pace with a sweep of the spear, then spun around to help her friend, already knowing that she was going to be too late. Battling a blue woman whose body appeared to be made of countless tiny, cheeping homunculi clinging together, Kurt had his back to Amanda and evidently hadn’t even seen the danger. This, then, was the moment that Kitty sometimes had nightmares about, the moment when the X-Men were finally going to lose.

His cloak in tatters, Dracula sprang from the gloom, grabbed his rebellious offspring by the shoulder, spun him around, and drove a piece of splintered wood into his breast. The other vampire collapsed.

Whirling once more, Kitty was only barely in time to parry the strikes of the creatures that were lunging at her. As it was, the blows sent her stumbling backward, but Dracula leapt forward to confront her attackers and so bought her the time to recover her balance. Fighting side by side, they dispatched those monsters and engaged the ones that instantly took their place.

“No one has been able to reach Belasco,” said Dracula, paralyzing a creature that looked like a diseased, hairless centaur with his hypnotic gaze, then striking it a savage blow to the neck.

“Maybe I can if I phase,” panted Kitty, thrusting with the spear.

“No,” said Nightcrawler. “Your power doesn’t protect you from magic. Belasco would zap you before you got to him. It will have to be inc.” Shadowcat could imagine just how reluctant he was to abandon Amanda, but she couldn’t have guessed it from his level tone. “You two keep the lid on here.”

He feinted a head cut, drove his point into the chest of the scaly horror before him, and then, with a bamf and a puff of smoke, he was gone.

Kurt teleported in behind Belasco, materializing in the shadow of the inverted cross and its grisly, foul-smelling burden. One surprise attack, one stab in the back, and this part of the fight could be over. Scarcely the most swashbuckling of tactics, but occasionally even a disciple of Zorro and Captain Blood had to bow to expedience, and considering what was at stake, and the sorcerer’s awesome power, this was surely one of those times.

He lunged, and though he hadn’t made a sound, Belasco turned smoothly and blocked his attack with a parry. When their swords clanged together, Kurt felt a slight but repellent shock, no doubt a manifestation of the evil magic locked in the sorcerer’s phosphorescent blade.

“Hello, Wagner,” said the leering homed man. “Have you come to beg for mercy? To plead to be my slave? Even now, it’s not too late.”

Kurt lashed out with a head cut. Once again, Belasco parried.

“Poor, deluded little goblin,” the warlock said mockingly.

“Rejecting your own true nature. Spuming paradise. But never fear. I’ll save you from your folly.”

Nightcrawler feinted another head cut, then rotated his wrist ninety degrees for a strike at the flank. But as he did, his eyes met Belasco’s.

Suddenly the mutant felt a ghastly shifting and churning in the depths of his psyche, like a convulsion in the depths of the earth forcing something that had been buried for eons to the surface. He tried to finish his attack, but his sword arm, like the rest of his body, was numb and dead.

For an instant, Jean didn’t remember where she was. Something—her surroundings themselves?—gnawed and pried at her.

Reflexively she shoved the attacking forces back, realizing as she did so that she was now a creature of pure psychic energy and a dweller inside Rogue’s mind. The forces nibbling and tugging at her were that psyche’s automatic, unconscious efforts to merge her with the whole. Had they succeeded, they might have robbed her of her ability to operate as an autonomous entity, or at least addled her to the point that she no longer recalled why she’d re-created herself here.

Fortunately, as a trained telepath, accustomed to walking in other people’s heads, she should be able to resist any degree of assimilation—for a while anyway. The fact that Rogue’s powers had already been subverted and altered helped her resist as well. Turning, she gazed about to orient herself.

Not that she was physically turning, of course, or peering through a pair of eyes. The landscape and her body alike were symbols, forms her imagination spontaneously generated to make the abstract realities of the psychic domain easier to grasp. But for all intents and purposes, she found herself standing on a cratered, barren plain beneath a moonless, starless sky. From somewhere shone a bare trace of light, just enough to reveal the several mountains rising from the flatness of the wasteland, A horrible miasma, seemingly compounded of a variety of foul stenches, hung in the air.

After a moment something made a thick, liquid sound. Pivoting in that direction. Phoenix saw the nearest of the mountains quake and change shape. First it slumped lower, as if it was melting, and then three thick, writhing appendages sprouted from its right side. Only then did she realize that the immense mounds were the psychic representations of the Elder Gods themselves.

She waited tensely for a moment, but the colossal thing didn’t attack. Evidently it had shifted and grown its tentacles for some reason that had nothing to do with her. Resolving to keep a wary eye on it and its fellows too, she levitated into the air.

As she flew across the blighted plain, she heard sobbing and whimpering, and swooped lower to investigate. Cowering in certain of its the pits and declivities lay the withered, faded simulacra of people whose essences Rogue had at one time or another absorbed. Many of them were so tattered and blurred that Jean couldn’t even recognize them. But she did spot the Magus, the intricate black and yellow pieces of his techno-organic body broken apart, and Captain America, his shield crumpled, his shrunken frame all but lost inside the folds of his red, white, and blue uniform.

In yet another crater crouched a thin, pale, prim-looking woman in dowdy clothes. Phoenix just had time to notice that she didn’t look as ravaged as the other doppelgangers when the woman snarled and, crimson eyes shining, clawed hands extended, hurtled up at her.

Caught by surprise, Jean narrowly dodged that first attack. Instantly the vampire wheeled to fly at her once more. This was evidently the avatar of the servant Belasco had used to poison Rogue, a creature he’d enchanted to enable her to thrive and exert power on the psychic plane.

Come on, then, thought Jean. I'll show you the difference between a real psi and a fake enhanced with a little hocus pocus. She put her hand behind her back where the vampire couldn’t see it, and a manifestation of her intent materialized inside her fingers.

Her adversary flew at her, and she blasted the undead thing with a mental bolt. Momentarily stunned, the vampire floundered in the air, and Jean dodged once again.

Baring her fangs, the vampire gazed into Phoenix’s eyes. The telepath could feel the other woman’s hypnotic power pounding at her, but her shields held. She didn’t counterattack, just shook her head and gave her foe a scornful, pitying smile.

Shrieking in fury, the vampire charged her a third time. Jean waited until she was nearly on top of her, then threw the object in her hand, guiding it with her telekinesis, or what passed for it in this realm of pure mind.

Belasco’s minion pivoted and began to dive, and for an instant Jean was afraid that, close as she was, she was still going to manage to dodge. Then the wooden stake punched into the vampire’s chest, and her body exploded in a shower of dust.

Jean looked about. She’d hoped that the undead woman’s demise would produce some encouraging change in the mind-scape around her, but no such luck. Although the vampire had been the original source of Rogue’s difficulties, her subsequent possession by the Dark Ones was so overwhelming that it rendered all other sources of psychic pollution irrelevant.

The telepath flew on, searching, wondering just how quickly time was passing in the physical world, until at last she spotted the deepest opening yet, a shaft descending deep in the rocky, sterile ground. Following her instincts—no doubt Logan would approve—she dove into it head first.

Almost immediately she plunged into total darkness, and willed a glow into existence to light her way. And it was a good thing she had, because farther down, the passage began to twist and narrow. Had she been unable to see where she was going, she might easily have bashed her head open.

Soon the way was so cramped that she felt as if she were crawling rather than flying, and wondered if she might get stuck. But then, after a final bend that changed the passage’s attitude from vertical to horizontal, it opened out into a claustrophobic little bell jar of a cave.

Here Rogue lay curled in the fetal position on the cold stone floor, looking as blurry and insubstantial as any of the psychic constructs weeping and shuddering above her head. Her glove-less hands were covered in blood, and the coppery smell of it suffused the air. For an instant Jean wondered if her fellow X-Man was comatose, but then, seeing the light, Rogue gasped and flinched.

“Don’t be afraid,” said Phoenix. “It’s me, Jean. I’ve come to help you.” She knelt beside Rogue and took her friend’s hands in her own.

“I’m so sorry,” the possessed woman whispered.

“Don’t be,” Jean said. “Belasco hasn’t opened the Dark Ones’ prison yet.” At least she hoped not. “We can still stop him.”

“You don’t understand,” said Rogue, tears slipping from her eyes. “I don’t have any control. You’re only here because I killed you.’’

“No,” said Jean.; ‘‘I’m here in your mind because I came in of my own free will.”

“Killed you, Scott, Logan, Ororo, and God knows how many others,” continued Rogue as if she hadn’t heard.

“You’re wrong,” insisted Phoenix, staring intently into her friend’s emerald eyes and gripping her fingers. “Belasco had someone impersonate you and murder people, but I promise, you didn’t kill anyone. If it seemed otherwise, it’s only because he lied to you and tricked you.”

Rogue blinked. “Really?” she asked in a tiny, childlike voice.

“Really. You fought your cravings every inch of the way, and you held out.” The gore evaporated from Rogue’s hands. “I need you to keep on fighting now. I got rid of the vampire for you, but the Elder Gods are still squatting up there on the surface making their magic. We have to work together to banish them. They have way too much psychic energy bound up in them for me to do it alone.”

“I—I don’t know if I can,” Rogue said. “They didn’t touch you, did they? They’re even stronger than you think they are. Stronger than you can imagine.”

Ordinarily it was useful to cloak the mindscape in forms derived from the material world, but there was a time to dispense with the pretense as well, and Phoenix judged that this was it. She willed her surroundings to become what they truly were, intricate patterns of energy, then established a mind link that enabled her to share the vision with Rogue. The other mutant gasped.

“You see?” asked Jean. “The rock around us, the air we’re breathing, and everything else you were seeing and feeling is simply a kind of illusion. A spectacle we’re creating for ourselves. In reality, it’s all just a part of your own thoughts. Your own mind. Even I’m not the genuine, original Jean. I’m just a facsimile your absorption power generated using the energy and the pattern the true Jean gave it.” She tried not to dwell on the possibility that her counterpart had died as a result, or that one of Belasco’s minions had tom her apart as she lay helpless.