“I guess I understand,” said Rogue slowly, as matrices of energy became dank stone walls once more. ‘ ‘Even with Helen gone, it’s so hard to think.”

“I know,” said Jean. “That’s because so much of your psychic force is tied up in those ugly lumps upstairs. But the main thing to understand is that just as I’m not the original Jean, they aren’t the real Elder Gods, either. They’re a part of you too. A pattern you wove and can unravel again.”

“How?”

“With my help,” said Jean, trying to sound confident. “I’m a psi, remember? Manipulating mental forces is what I do. I’ve never been able to manipulate yours very well before, but now that I’m actually living inside your mind. I’m in a better position to do so. When we go after the Dark Ones, I’ll feed you power, and help you direct your attacks for maximum effect.”

“But how do we fight them?”

“Do whatever feels right. You can punch them just like you would a physical foe. Or use your imagination. Visualize lightning bolts blasting them, or something like that. Or simply will them to disappear. Whatever you do, believe that they’re only a facet of yourself, and that one portion has no power to destroy or dominate the whole. Your faith will weaken them and strengthen both of us.”

“Can I absorb them?”

“Since in reality, you’ve already absorbed them, no, unless, perhaps, you make a conscious effort. And I don’t recommend that. We definitely don’t need you running off yet another copy of an Elder God on an even deeper level of your psyche. Are you ready?”

Rogue took a deep breath and gave a jerky little nod. ‘ ‘I guess so.”

“Good,” Jean answered. “Let’s do it.”

She led Rogue back up the shaft, noticing that it was now wider and straighter than when she’d descended. In fact, before long it opened out into a wide pit, permitting the two X-Men to fly side by side. Presumably the terrain was shifting because Rogue no longer felt she needed a hiding place.

Even so, the possessed woman hesitated for a moment when they rose above ground level, and the enormous, squirming masses of the Dark Ones came into view. Once again, Jean showed her the reality behind the facade, dissolving the intricate, festering things into constructs of force, mere subpatterns in the grand design that was the mindscape as a whole—albeit subpattems containing a prodigious amount of power.

“You see?” said the telepath. “They’re just pale shadows of the originals. Those spiral nodes are weak points.”

“Got it,” said Rogue. She clenched her fists, extended her arms, and rocketed at the nearest Dark One like an artillery shell.

Jean peered behind the illusion of the other woman’s avatar, viewing it too as a structure of pure psychic force. After an instant of analysis, she infused her friend with a measure of her psi energy, lending her additional strength and shoring up a weak spot in the matrix.

The living mountain didn’t even try to fend Rogue off. Perhaps it was so busy with opening the gate to the prison dimension that it didn’t even notice her coming. She slammed into it with an enormous thud, and an instant later plunged all the way out the other side, propelling raw wet chunks of the Elder God’s substance before her. The huge creature formed a hundred mouths, which shrieked, howled, and roared at once. Rogue wheeled for another pass.

Jean turned and hurled a sort of mental bolt at a second Dark One, willing it to cease to exist. Even though her attack caught it squarely in the vulnerable spot at the center of its writhing, chaotic mass, that first effort did little more than attract its attention. Suddenly it was sliding across the plain toward her with appalling speed, like the bullet trains she’d seen in Japan streaking down their tracks.

She flew upward, trying to rise beyond its reach, and it stretched like taffy to follow. Countless limbs erupted from its surface, flailing and clutching at her. Fending them off as best she could with a telekinetic shield, she struck at the Dark One’s weak point again, this time using every iota of her strength.

She grunted with the strain, and her shield failed. Tentacles lashed at her. But before they could smash her to pulp, the deity turned to stone, which instantly shattered into tiny pieces. Once the clattering rain of gravel hit the ground, it was all but indistinguishable from the surrounding landscape.

Jean looked about. Rogue’s first adversary lay scattered across the plain in a vast sheet of slime and filth. As a result of the two X-Men’s victories, the possessed woman’s ghostly form had taken on substance and definition. But now, raging in countless inhuman voices, the other four Elder Gods were converging on their assailants. Which meant no more surprise attacks, and no more dealing with the deities one at a time, either.

As their training dictated, Jean and Rogue took up positions hovering back to back. Theoretically, that should have protected them from attacks from the rear, but with the Elder Gods’ scores of tentacles twisting and whipping in all directions, it scarcely helped at all. Phoenix dodged madly, flung up one psychokinetic barrier after another, meanwhile thrusting repeatedly with her telepathy. At last she stabbed through a second god’s armor. This time, the immense thing simply vanished, present one second and gone the next.

The lethal strike had required a supreme effort, and perhaps it had slowed Jean down. Or perhaps she simply wasn’t expecting an attack at range, since up to now, the Dark Ones had only tried to smash or grab her with their limbs. At any rate, when the blasts of blue flame erupted from another deity’s ragged, oozing sores, she failed to throw up a shield in time.

The fire seared her, stunned her, and started her tumbling in free fall. She struggled to focus her power anew, to pull up and fly, and then two colossal appendages—one a slate-gray flipper, the other a mottled, chancrous, three-fingered hand— clapped shut around her and squeezed.

The impact was agonizing, and the pressure, irresistible. Knowing she was finished, she reached out for Rogue’s mind and bequeathed her all that remained of her strength. An instant later she was gone.

Rogue darted this way and that, blasting the Elder Gods with dazzling, crackling lightning bolts. In the real world, she knew, enough time had elapsed that she probably no longer possessed Ororo’s powers. But in the universe of her own mind, if she could imagine something, she could do it, just as Jean had promised.

After all the anguish, bewilderment, and humiliation she’d endured, it felt glorious to be herself again, to lash out at the forces that had done their best to break her and make her their tool. And by God, even though she was rapidly tiring, she and Jean were going to beat them. Between them, they’d already accounted for three of the living mountains, and unless she was mistaken, this fourth one was about to—

A sudden surge of energy infused her with fresh strength. She experienced a fleeting impression of iron resolution and excruciating pain, and then her mindlink with Phoenix dissolved. Which could only mean that the other X-Man had been destroyed. Snarling, Rogue hurled yet another electrical discharge.

But now, despite her augmented power, the tide of battle turned inexorably against her. With Jean gone, it became steadily more difficult to shift her perception, view the Elder Gods as patterns of energy, and so determine their weak points. Moreover, she soon began to tire again. And worst of all, now that it was three against one, she had to struggle so frantically to avoid the monsters’ ceaseless attacks that it was frequently impossible to strike back at all.

The colossal horrors sprouted new sets of mouths, which for once all cried in unison, in human speech. “Give up, slave! You cannot win! You belong to us now!”

Like hell I do! thought Rogue, zigzagging at top speed to avoid three sets of huge, clacking chelae and then a blue ray that, judging by the chill it spread through the air, was evidently intended to freeze her. There had to be a way to pull this off. If only the monsters hadn’t nailed Jean. If only she weren’t now so badly outnumbered!

Then it occurred to her that even with Phoenix gone, perhaps she didn’t have to be outnumbered if she wished it otherwise, not if the only limit to her powers was her own willpower and imagination. “Come help me!” she shouted.

For a moment, nothing happened. Her heart sank, and the Dark Ones seemed to loom even huger. Then all the human psychic ghosts she'd absorbed over the years emerged from their hiding places in the pits and craters. Like herself, they’d derived strength and substance from the demise of the first three Elder Gods. Enough so that, although many still looked haggard and faded, they were ready to fight.

Captain America’s shield, intact once more, whirled through the air, struck the flank of a Dark One, bounced, hit a second one, and rebounded into his red-gloved hand. Nightcrawler attacked with his fists, Storm, her lightning, and the Magus, his strength. Colossus picked up Wolverine and threw him in the maneuver they called a fastball special; landing atop one of the malignant deities, the Canadian slashed it with his claws. The hulking Juggernaut tore chunks of flesh from its base, and Shadowcat phased through their attacks, distracting them long enough for Professor Xavier to strike them with psionic bolts. Spiral spun her six arms in an intricate pattern, casting a spell, while the Human Torch threw balls of fire at the evil deities. Even Cody, still the slender blond boy whose life Rogue had stolen rather than the emaciated man who’d died in her arms years later, battered one of the titanic horrors with a rock.

Rogue now felt the strength leaving her body at an appalling rate. As she’d once drained these phantoms of their vitality, so now they were siphoning hers to power their assault. But judging by the damage they were inflicting, and the way the Elder Gods were thrashing and bellowing in pain and alarm, these avatars of her victims also represented her best hope of ending her possession.

Concentrating fiercely, she managed to view the Dark Ones as energy constructs one last time, then hurled thunderbolts at their vulnerable points. “Hit them where I’m hitting them!” she cried, and her army did its best to obey. She started ramming the monstrosities in a series of kamikaze dives, smashing into them with every bit of her waning strength and speed, heedless of whatever damage she might be doing to herself in the process.

Veering back and forth, she slipped through a writhing maze of tentacles and crashed squarely into a Dark One’s weak spot, an organ that currently resembled a squirming, rotting yellow rose. The deity exploded in a dazzling flash, and the force of the blast slammed into her and hurled her backward. Stunned, she plummeted toward the ground.

As she fell, the two remaining Elder Gods perished, one in a second explosion, the other imploding, crumbling in on itself until, an instant later, not a trace of it remained. Then she hit the ground.

Or rather... the floor? Dazed, she realized her awareness was back in the material world. Back in her real body, not just a psychic simulation of it. Her flesh writhed and flowed as it shed the deformities her possession had imposed on it.

Jean lay beside her. Scott and Logan stood over the two of them, fighting to hold off a horde of demons. Belasco confronted Kurt—how had he gotten involved in this?—behind a bloodstained altar, and under the lofty ceiling, the physical manifestation of a powerful magic pulsed and shimmered.

Rogue guessed that as long as Belasco was still functional, the spell that he and the Elder Gods had woven in concert was still going to proceed to its ghastly conclusion. No problem. She couldn’t think of anything she’d rather do than help Kurt make the sorcerer nonfunctional. “Payback time, sugar,” she whispered, and tried to draw herself to her feet.

It was only when that effort failed that she felt just how terribly the battle to expel the Dark Ones from her psyche had drained her. Her head spun, and she struggled desperately to hold onto consciousness, but it slipped away from her anyway.

Chapter 15

For a split second more, the depths of Kurt’s psyche writhed, and then the sensation passed, leaving him unchanged and free to act. “I keep telling you,” he said to Belasco, grinning, “you have me confused with someone else.” He completed the cut to the flank.

Caught by surprise, Belasco only barely managed to parry “So be it, then,” the sorcerer said. “In that case, you’ll simply have to die.” He swung his glowing sword in a cut at Kurt’s knee.

The mutant leapt over the stroke, aimed his saber for a slash at Belasco’s chest, and then something warned him that his adversary’s sword stroke had been a sort of feint. Instead of following through on his intent to attack, the X-Man teleported three feet to the right.

A blaze of crackling azure fire ripped through the space he’d occupied only a moment before. Evidently Belasco could fence and cast spells at the same time.

Determined to end the fight before the homed man could draw a bead on him anew, Nightcrawler teleported again while still in midleap. Materializing behind Belasco, he lunged the instant his two-toed feet touched the floor.

As before, the man in red sensed the threat, and, his cloak swirling, pivoted to meet it, but this time, he was a shade too slow. Kurt’s saber plunged against his chest, slashed the silken fabric of his tunic, and, ringing, rebounded from his ruddy chest, leaving it unmarked. Nightcrawler stared, aghast, and Belasco chuckled.

“I’m afraid I’m all but indestructible,” the sorcerer said, “like dear little Rogue. A gift of the Elder Gods. Perhaps with luck, one of your more powerful comrades could harm me a

little, but you, imp? It’s really quite unlikely.” He twitched the point of his sword, and another magical attack, this one a seething ball made of ragged strands of darkness, popped into existence before him and streaked at his foe.

Kurt dodged it with a somersault, then flung himself into another furious attack. Over the course of the next minute, he cut and thrust at all the most vulnerable points of the human body, striving desperately at least to inflict a wound, always unsuccessfully. He wondered why Belasco was even bothering to parry. He hoped it was because it was at least theoretically possible that he could incapacitate the magician, but perhaps his opponent was simply enjoying the game.

Meanwhile, he didn’t dare stop moving for a second. He could parry Belasco’s blade—the sorcerer was an able swordsman, but no better than himself—but only by dodging, ducking, and teleporting could he avoid the flares of mystic power that the homed man hurled at him. Before long, he noticed that Belasco’s jet-black eyes always narrowed just as he cast a spell, and often, only that warning sign allowed him to displace himself in time to avoid incineration or some other ghastly fate.

As he fought, bounding and flipping back and forth, onto the massive basalt altar and off, teleporting until a haze of sulfurous smoke all but obscured his surroundings, his attention was naturally riveted on Belasco. But even so, he caught glimpses of his comrades. Colossus, virtually buried beneath a pile of demons. Cyclops, blasting a pew into a hail of wooden shrapnel that dispatched three onrushing vampires at once, fighting to protect Jean, Rogue, and the bloody, battered Logan, all three sprawled motionless on the floor. Storm, backed into a comer, now standing as if she could no longer spare the energy to fly, defending herself with howling gusts of wind. Kitty and Dracula, holding a swarm of demons away from Amanda. Each of the mutants—the ones who were still conscious, anyway—battled as fiercely as ever, yet, to the eye of someone who knew them as well as Kurt, they were obviously nearing the limits of their strength.

Which meant that Nightcrawler couldn’t teleport away, grab one of them, and pop him up here to deal with Belasco. The displacement would leave any of his fellow X-Men too enervated to be of any use. It might even exhaust Dracula, and in any case, the vampire was needed where he was. No, the best Kurt could hope for from his comrades was that they would continue to keep the army of monsters occupied. He’d have to stop the sorcerer himself.

There must be a way, he thought. There was always a way to penetrate an opponent’s defense, if a fencer only possessed the wit to see it. But as he failed with one attack after another, either because Belasco blocked them or because they simply couldn’t so much as nick his skin, as time and again, he avoided death by a hair, he couldn’t think of a thing.

His heart pounded, and the breath rasped in his throat. It wasn’t the swordplay or the acrobatics. Strenuous as they were, his trained muscles could have kept them up for far longer, had they been the only demand on his stamina. The problem was too many teleports in too brief a time. Soon he’d slow down, and at that moment, Belasco would no doubt put an end to him.

The structure of magical light above their heads blazed brighter, and even though he was by no stretch of the imagination a mystic, Nightcrawler nonetheless sensed that somewhere, an immense door had begun to swing open. Perhaps every fragile, defenseless human being on the face of the planet was sensing it as well.

Belasco laughed. “You feel it, don’t you, Wagner? They’re coming. Which means that, amusing as this interlude has been, it’s time to end it. I must compose myself to greet the new masters of the world.” His eyes narrowed, he flicked the point of his sword, and dark lightning leaped from the blade.

Kurt dodged it with a leap, displaced himself to avoid a second crackling bolt, materialized atop the basalt altar, and hacked at the crown of Belasco’s head. The sorcerer didn’t lift his sword in time to parry, and while the blow didn’t cut him, it at least knocked him off balance. Eager to follow up, Nightcrawler sprang from the graven stone block, but, even staggering, Belasco still had command of his sorcery. The mutant had to teleport in midair to save himself from yet another blast of malignant power. By the time he reappeared and wheeled to continue the attack, Belasco had recovered his equilibrium and come back on guard.

For an instant, Nightcrawler felt a surge of despair, but he thrust it from his mind. There is always a way. And as he flipped and teleported about Belasco, never still, attacking him from all sides, something caught his eye, and he prayed that perhaps he finally saw his chance.

Three more rapid-fire teleports which, he hoped, would momentarily befuddle his foe, each jump producing a clenching pain in his guts. The third displacement landed him squarely in front of Belasco, who reflexively thrust out his sword. Kurt swept the forte of his blade against the foible of the sorcerer’s, then, taking advantage of the leverage the juxtaposition afforded him, spun the other man’s weapon in an envelopement.

Unfortunately, such a prise de fer was inevitably a slower move than a simple cut or thrust, and afforded Belasco a good opportunity for a sorcerous counterattack. Even as Kurt took control of his sword, the sorceror rattled off a word of power, and the mutant, unable to complete his action and retreat at the same time, opted for the former. Once he’d tom the enchanted sword from Belasco’s ruddy hand and hurled it pin-wheeling into the nave, he leapt, but by that time a bolt of silvery light was already streaking at him. The magic caught him in the chest and sent agony shrieking along his nerves. He fell heavily to the floor, and when he tried to scramble up, found that he was paralyzed. He strained for one last teleport, to carry himself away from his foe, only to discover that he couldn’t manage that either.

Belasco bent over him, his clawed fingers reaching for the X-Man’s throat. “Farewell, Wagner,” he said.

His body, steel though it was, aching from the pounding he was taking, fiery pain throbbing in his broken leg, Piotr swept his arm in an arc that hurled two demons across the nave. That left four more beating and ripping at him: a wrinkled brown hobgoblin, no taller than a child and thin as a stick, with a wedge-shaped head, and long, barbed talons on its oversized hands; a hulking thing with four arms, whose gray hide sweated clear drops of acid; a young female vampire with black lipstick and eye shadow, clad in tattered jeans and a leather jacket decorated with studs and clinking chains; and a scaly one-eyed monstrosity that was doing its best to beat the mutant’s head in with the pointed end of a war hammer.

The goblin was so nimble that, up until now, Colossus hadn’t been able to touch it. He faked a grab at the four-armed creature, then suddenly snatched for the smaller demon instead. At last his fingers closed about its waist, and he used it to bludgeon the other monster, sparing himself further contact with its corrosive coating.

The hobgoblin thrashed and squawked for a moment, but after the second blow, it hung broken and silent in his grasp. Another swing sent the gray demon tumbling backward, its tusks shattered and its snout flattened.

From the corner of his eye, Piotr glimpsed the war hammer hurtling down at him once more. Releasing the inert, flopping form of the goblin, he frantically jerked his head out of the way, and the weapon crunched into the floor. He lifted his arm to punch the one-eyed creature, but the vampire pounced on him and grabbed him by the wrist. Wrestling, they rolled across the floor.

Piotr knew the undead woman wasn’t strong enough to hurt him physically, and by now, she must know it too. No doubt she hoped either to make eye contact and mesmerize him, or to hold him in place long enough for the demon to bash his brains out. Determined to deny her the opportunity to do either, the Russian dug the fingers of his free hand into the floor, ripped up a scrap of wood, and drove it into her back. She kept struggling, so he yanked it out and stabbed again. This time, he evidently pierced her heart, because she suddenly stopped moving, and the faint stink of her undead flesh intensified into a nauseating miasma.

The hammer streaked at Colossus. He used the rotting coipse in his hands as a shield, and the weapon thudded deep inside it. By jerking the body, he managed to rip the hammer from the one-eyed demon’s hands.

Hissing, the creature scrambled backward. Evidently, despite its fangs and robust build, it was reluctant to fight Piotr empty handed. Tossing the vampire’s corpse, that was now little more than bones and slime, across the church, the mutant looked around for his next attacker. He was sure there’d be one. No matter how many monsters he defeated, they just kept coming at him, with no letup at all.

But now, they didn’t. Rather, they hovered out of his reach. He wondered if his fierce defense had finally thrown a scare into them, if they’d keep their distance while he crawled to the altar. Then he noticed that the structure of lights above his head was pulsing brighter and brighter, and sensed that somewhere a portal was beginning to open.

The demons weren’t hanging back because they were too afraid to face him but because they thought they’d already won. They knew Piotr couldn’t drag himself all the way to Belasco in the seconds remaining. Why, then, should they endanger themselves any further? In another minute, the Dark Ones themselves would no doubt destroy Colossus and his teammates.

In the desecrated, smoke-filled apse, fighting furiously but uselessly, Kurt leapt and teleported around and around Belasco. A somersault left him facing in Piotr’s direction, his yellow eyes narrowed, and the steel man realized that his friend had observed that, though injured, he was presently in the clear.

Nightcrawler displaced himself three more times, so quickly that the muffled bangs nearly merged into one report. Then, materializing in front of Belasco, spinning his saber in a circle, he twirled the phosphorescent sword from the magician’s hand.

An instant later, Belasco dropped the blue-furred mutant with a blaze of sorcery. But by then, the enchanted sword was tumbling through the air straight toward Piotr, and judging from the way its owner was still oriented on Kurt, he didn’t realize that the other X-Man was now in a position to make use of it.

Unfortunately, the one-eyed demon did recognize the danger. Dashing forward, it snatched the weapon from the air.

Heedless of the flare of agony the lurching motion produced in his broken leg, Colossus hurled himself forward, grabbed the creature’s shank just above its cloven hoof, and yanked it down to the floor. He reared above it, pummeled it until it stopped straggling, then ripped the sword from its grasp. His skin crawled at the weapon’s touch.

Turning back toward the dais at the front of the church, he saw Belasco reaching for Kurt’s throat. Gripping the sword part way down the blade, as if it were a javelin, Piotr threw it with all his strength.

Some of the demons bellowed or howled a warning. Alarmed at last, Belasco pivoted and began to mouth a word of power. Too late. The sword plunged into his breast, twelve inches of the gory blade shooting from his back.

His face a mask of agony and disbelief, Belasco reeled backward, and a corona of crackling black flame engulfed his body. In another instant, it consumed him utterly, not leaving so much as a wisp of ash behind.

The floating construct of light blinked out of existence. Piotr felt the silent crash as the gate to the Dark Ones’ prison slammed shut. He thought he sensed a vast chorus of alien voices screaming and roaring in frustration, but perhaps that was only his imagination.

Across the church, demons simply faded away. Maybe, with Belasco gone, nothing anchored them to the material world, or maybe, now that the Elder Gods wouldn’t be returning after all, they simply saw no reason to remain. If any of Dracula’s progeny had even survived the battle, they were apparently now slinking away as well. They certainly weren’t attacking the X-Men any further.

Piotr shuddered in the grip of a savage exultation, and tears slipped from his metal eyes. But in a moment, far sooner than he might have expected, the emotion passed, and he remembered he had teammates who were down. Wiping his face, he looked up at Kurt. “Are you all right?”

“Belasco paralyzed me,” gritted Nightcrawler, laboring to articulate the words, “but the effect is passing. Nice teamwork, mein freund. Are you well?”

“A broken leg,” said Piotr. “A few bums. It will all heal. How did you know Belasco’s own sword could hurt him?” “I didn’t,” Kurt admitted. “But I could tell it was magic, and I knew my weapon wasn’t cutting him. How are the others? I can’t quite lift my head yet to look for myself.” Gingerly, now far more conscious of his aches and pains, Piotr hauled himself around to check.

Cyclops was kneeling beside the still-motionless Phoenix and Rogue, and the just-starting-to-stir Wolverine. After a moment, he grinned a most uncharacteristic grin. “They’re all alive!” he shouted.

“Thank the Goddess,” panted Ororo, slumping back in her comer.

In the vestibule, Amanda crumpled to one knee, but it looked to Piotr as if she wasn’t wounded, just exhausted. Disciplined martial artist that she was, Kitty didn’t permit herself to display her fatigue to the same degree, but, breathing deeply, she leaned heavily on a spear. In contrast, unbruised and unbloodied, Dracula stood as straight and moved as lithely as ever, with only his ragged clothing to show that he’d just emerged from a battle.

“Everyone is all right,” said Piotr to Kurt.

“Is it really over?” asked Kitty of the company at large.

“It is indeed,” said Dracula with a smile. “The war is won, and it’s time to claim the spoils. A bride for me, and a throne and eternal life for Ororo.” Turning toward the windrider, he held out his pallid hand.

Chapter 16

Ororo’s mouth turned dry with fear. She was no match for Dracula now. She’d never fully recovered her strength since Rogue had drained her, and the battle had all but exhausted her powers. She doubted she could even run away. At the moment, the vampire could almost certainly fly faster than she could.

“No!” Kitty cried, sounding very young. “You promised to be our ally!”

“Only until we defeated Belasco,” Dracula replied, “and happily, that has now come to pass.”

Shadowcat leveled her spear, bellowed a kiai, and thrust the weapon at his chest. With literally inhuman speed, the vampire sidestepped the attack, grabbed Kitty with one hand, and slapped her with the other. The mutant hung limp in his grasp.

Scott lurched to his feet and, hobbling forward, peppered Dracula with optic blasts. The scarlet rays were feeble compared to those Cyclops could fire when he was at full power. They didn’t even jolt the vampire backward.

Sneering, Dracula threw the unconscious Shadowcat into Scott, and the two X-Men wound up in a tangled heap on the floor.

Kurt still seemed to be paralyzed, and Amanda was wheezing on her knees. Jean and Rogue were still unconscious, and Wolverine was only just starting to stir. Piotr had somehow risen and was laboriously hopping forward, each hop twisting his features with pain, but Ororo could tell that he’d never cover the length of the church in time to help her, nor, crippled, would he pose a threat to Dracula even if he did. For the moment, she was on her own.

So be it then. Thrusting dread from her mind, she mustered what little remained of her powers, then hurled her most powerful lightning. The dazzling white bolt made Dracula thrash in place while a deafening thunderclap shook the church, shattering several of the stained-glass windows. When the discharge ended, he crumpled to the floor. For a moment, she dared to hope—but then, smiling, he flowed to his feet.

She had no more lightning with which to strike him, so she used the air, hitting him with one frigid blast after another, and, remembering the tactic she’d noticed Scott employing earlier, scooping up and throwing barrages of splintered wood. All to no avail. His head down, his ragged cloak fluttering behind him, Dracula impelled himself inexorably closer, until finally, no matter how she strained to keep it blowing, the wind too forsook her. Her strength exhausted, it took everything she had simply to stand straight and defiant, poised to at least punch at him once before the end.

“That’s why I love you,” said Dracula, his crimson eyes gleaming. “That indomitable spirit. You fought valiantly to the very last. But this time, you can’t escape your destiny. Like these other mortals, you’re battered and exhausted, while I am as strong as ever.”

“You’re forgettin’ somethin’,” a bass voice rasped.

Startled, Dracula pivoted.

“There’s one X-Man who bounces back from a beating just as fast as you do,” the voice continued. Grinning, Wolverine heaved himself up from the floor.

Too bad that cocky statement was a lie. Sure, Logan was gradually recovering from the mauling that last demon had given him before Cyke blasted it back to the netherworld. His wounds were closing, and his strength was trickling back. But he wasn’t fully recovered, not by a long shot. He’d leaned on his healing factor heavily over the course of the day, and even his turbocharged metabolism had to slow down sometime.

But when he’d woken to see Dracula closing in on Ororo. he’d known that his weakness and pain didn’t matter. Nothing did, except keeping die leech away from his intended prey.

And so, drops of his blood spattering to the floor, Wolverine did his best to mask the wave of dizziness that momentarily assailed him. If Dracula realized how rocky he was, he might decide simply to snatch up Storm and dash from the church, and the Canadian was far from sure that he could sprint fast enough to cut him off. He needed the creature in black to believe that the only way out was through him. Or else to want to kill him so badly that he was even willing to delay the pleasure of transforming Ororo to do it. Either way, to stand and fight.

“Come on, dead man,” Logan said, sneering. “We been wantin’ a piece of one another all night, so let’s dance. Or are you gonna back down again, like you did in the armory?”

Dracula smiled. “Some of your comrades may make me worthy servants, but I promise, animal, there will be no immortality for you. Only the corruption of the grave.” One white hand held high and the other low in a skilled hand-to-hand combatant’s guard, he slowly advanced on the smaller man. Studying one another, they began to circle.

Logan was grateful that the vampire hadn’t tried to overwhelm him with an immediate charging attack. Every second that passed restored a bit more of his strength and coordination. When Dracula finally did pounce, hands outstretched and fangs bared, the X-Man managed to dodge, and to gash his opponent’s flank with his right-hand claws.

The undead creature hissed in pain, but when Wolverine pulled his arm back, the ivory skin beneath the torn black clothing was unmarked. Turning, Dracula threw a head punch. Skipping backward, Logan met the blow with a sweep of his left-hand claws. The counterattack should have severed the vampire’s hand at the wrist—indeed, Logan could feel his natural weaponry shearing through bone—but when his claws

ripped free, the appendage was still attached. Sneering. Dracula suddenly pivoted, surprising the mutant with a lightning-fast roundhouse kick that would have shattered any other man’s ribs. As it was, it drove the air from Logan’s lungs and hurled him into the wall. Half dazed with the shock of the two impacts, he barely managed to regain his balance in time to meet the vampire’s follow-up attack.

As the two men fought on, Wolverine ducked, dodged, and blocked madly, doing his best to avoid another such Herculean blow. His unbreakable bones wouldn’t be enough to keep him on his feet if an attack concussed him, or ruptured one of his internal organs. But he was even more concerned to keep Dracula from grappling him. If the leech got his fangs in him, he „ might well be able to seize control of his mind, depriving him of even the will to fight.

Meanwhile, the X-Man cut and stabbed relentlessly, many of his attacks variations on the ko-dachi, short sword techniques he’d mastered while studying kenjutsu in Japan. He concentrated on the lower part of Dracula’s body, and gradually, the vampire’s right hand, the one he was holding higher, began to creep down.

Which was what Logan wanted. Because, while he was no expert on the occult, after the X-Men’s first encounter with Dracula, he’d done a little boning up on the undead. Enough to learn that, while most thrusts and cuts from his adamantium claws could do no more than slow his adversary down for an instant, if he could slice Dracula’s head completely off with one blow, that would kill him sure enough.

Dracula jabbed at the mutant’s face. Wolverine deflected the blow with an otoshi-uke dropping block, then instantly squatted, feinting a stab at the vampire’s belly. Both of Dracula’s hands dropped to defend, and at last his upper body was completely open. Springing into the air, Logan whipped his right-hand claws in an all-out yokomen-uchi side strike at the undead monarch’s neck.

If the X-Man had been fresh and unwounded, he would have been fast enough to pull the maneuver off. As it was, Dracula only barely snapped his left arm up in time to block. Wolverine’s claws bit deep into flesh and bone, but at the same instant, the vampire’s right fist tagged him with a solid uppercut to the jaw, a blow that knocked him to the floor. As he jumped back up, shaken, the taste of blood in his mouth, his eyes met Dracula’s, and he faltered. After a moment, he realized he couldn’t look away, or indeed, move at all.

“It’s over, X-Man,” Dracula said. “Sheathe your claws.”

Logan obeyed, the blades retracting with a faint metallic snakt. For a moment, he didn’t know why he shouldn’t do whatever Dracula said. Indeed, his head was numb and empty of any thoughts at all.

Then the old berserker rage, the feral fury that all the years of therapy and Zen had never truly tamed, welled up inside him, painting the world bloodred and shattering Dracula’s spell. Snarling, his claws leaping from their sockets, Logan hurled himself at the man in black.

Once again, he caught the bloodsucker by surprise, and came within a hair of slashing through his neck. But Dracula whirled aside and hammered him with a one-two combination, the first punch to the head and the second to the chest.

Logan went down once more, and this time, it was considerably harder to get up. His mouth was now full of blood, enough to choke him, which was perhaps the reason he couldn’t catch his breath. Something throbbed inside his torso, while objects in his field of vision divided into two, flowed together once more, and wavered in and out of focus.

Leering, Dracula advanced again, and even the savage beast that Logan had become realized he was in desperate straits.

Though his actions were still fast and deadly enough to annihilate a host of ordinary combatants, Amanda could tell that Wolverine was on his last legs. And Piotr was still yards away from the fracas, not that it looked as if he was in any shape to do more than delay Logan’s death by another instant anyway.

Which meant it was up to her to save her friends. At least, unlike everyone else, she hadn’t sustained any physical punishment. Kurt, Shadowcat, and Dracula had protected her from that. Indeed, she’d caught her second wind. But the struggle to hold back Belasco’s conjuration had virtually drained her reserves of magical power. What, then, could she do?

If she was lucky, one thing. The trick that, as the king of the undead had himself observed, she’d practiced so often that it came more easily than any other.

She waited until the next time Dracula turned his back to her, then waved her hand, trying to attract Logan’s attention. The snarl on the mutant’s face made him look as if he was sunk deep in a bestial frenzy, but even so, perhaps he saw her and divined her intent. Because he stopped dodging back and forth, and by standing his ground, kept his opponent facing in the right direction.

Amanda rose and ran at Dracula. Despite her attempt to move silently, the vampire sensed her approach, pivoted, and struck at her. She saw instantly that, charging forward as she was, she was going to lunge straight into the blow.

Wolverine bellowed and smashed a side-thrust kick to Dra-cula’s midsection. The attack rocked the vampire slightly off balance, and his hand missed Amanda by an inch. Plunging on, she threw her arms around him and tried to teleport.

She and the vampire remained in place while his hands gripped her neck and, his long nails cutting her, jerked her off her feet like a hangman’s noose. Thrashing futilely, already feeling as if she were starved for air, she feared that she’d overestimated her sorcery. Then her sluggish power finally responded to her will. The gloom of the benighted church gave way to dazzling glare.

Dracula screamed and dropped her in the sand. Instinctively she scrambled away from him through the dry, superheated air. Squinting, she discerned that her magic had brought her precisely where she’d wanted to go. Above her, the sun blazed in a cloudless sky, while the beige dunes of the Sahara rolled away endlessly in all directions, with never a rocky outcropping or a tree to create a patch of shade.

Dropping to one knee, Dracula frantically tried to cover himself with his shredded cloak. It didn’t help much. Amanda stared in horrified fascination as pale, crackling flame danced on his body, quickly spreading to his inky garments as well, and a dark, foul-smelling smoke arose from his immolation.

Possibly recognizing that his attempt to shield himself was merely protracting his agony, the vampire abruptly lurched to his feet and allowed his mantle to fall away from his head. Amanda gasped at the blackened, shriveled, still-burning ruin his face had become. Somehow orienting on her even though his eyes had melted in their sockets, Dracula staggered toward her with crumbling hands extended.

Even in his death throes, he could still be dangerous. She dredged up the strength for one final teleport and left him to his fate.

Chapter 17

Rogue stared down at Jean, who still lay motionless on the floor, now with her fellow X-Man’s tattered brown jacket folded beneath her head. Of them all, the aubum-haired telepath was the last to recover consciousness. Scott sat beside her, holding her hand, while everyone else hovered in the general vicinity.

“Come on,” Rogue groaned.

Ororo put her hand on her shoulder. “Patience, my friend. She’s alive. She’ll be all right.”

But Rogue knew that wasn’t necessarily so. After she’d drained him, Cody had never woken, and Carol Danvers had come back damaged. If she’d hurt Jean, when the teleapth had risked everything to help her—

“I can feel her mind stirring!” Scott exclaimed. Rogue felt a surge of joy, and Kitty let out a cheer.

Jean’s lustrous green eyes opened, then moved back and forth, taking in the circle of teammates peering down at her. “Wow,” she said, her voice so feeble that it was almost inaudible, “you people look awful.”

Logan grinned. “Like they say, Red, you oughtta see the other guys. After you helped Rogue kick the Dark Ones out of her head, Kurt and Piotr stuck a sword through Belasco and lit him on fire. Then, when Dracula turned on us, Amanda teleported him to the other side of the world, where the sun’s shining, and of course that torched him too. We’ve had ourselves a regular supernatural barbecue.”

“You all right, Jean?” asked Rogue.

“I’m fine,” Phoenix replied. “Just tired and sore. Like everyone else is, I’m sure.”

“Thank God,” Rogue said, blinking back tears. “I’ll never forget what you did for me.” She looked around at the others. “All of you.”

“It’s part of the package,” said Wolverine. “You’ve saved our butts plenty of times.”

“But you did it for me after I nearly murdered one of our own,” said Rogue. She turned to Ororo. “Can you ever forgive me?”

The windrider smiled. “As if you even need to ask.” “We’ll rest for another ten minutes,” said Scott, “then retrieve Laurel’s car and head back to the Blackbird and the Cessna. We can radio Major Jones to tell her the crisis is over after we’re in the air. The shape we’re in, I don’t want to give her a second chance to take us into custody.”

“When the dust settles,” said Kurt, his yellow eyes gleaming, “do you think anyone will believe that the entire world was actually in danger, or that the X-Men saved the day?” “The Professor might be disappointed in me for saying this,” Cyclops answered, “but right now, I couldn’t care less. I just want to go home.”

Logan had noticed that, even though Piotr had watched over the unconscious Jean as anxiously as his teammates, he had nonetheless sat a little apart, on the one of the few pews that the battle hadn’t shattered. He was still there now, his body made of ordinary flesh once more, his broken leg immobilized by an improvised splint, and a pensive, troubled expression on his wide, square-jawed, handsome face.

His half-healed cuts and bruises twinging, Wolverine hobbled over to the Russian. “How do you like the taste of revenge?” the short man asked.

Piotr smiled ruefully. “I was ... ecstatic to throw the sword through Belasco. I suppose I still am happy I did it. But I don’t like the person I became tonight, eaten up with rage and hate. I’m ashamed of that man, and I don’t want to turn into him ever again.”

Logan extracted the pack of cheroots from his belt, ‘ ‘From your expression, I had a hunch you were worryin’ about something like that. If I were you, I wouldn’t sweat it. Take it from a guy with a real talent for ‘rage and hate,’ you ain’t the type. Now that you’ve gotten even with Belasco for hurting Illy ana, you’ll go back to bein’ your old self, helping old ladies across the street and painting your pictures, so decent and sensitive that it makes the rest of us want to puke,”

Colossus chuckled. “I hope so. At any rate, at least I now feel as if I belong among the X-Men. Ever since I abandoned you to join Magneto, I’ve worried that I could never truly be welcome again.”

Logan snorted. “Told you you’d switch back to normal. Already you’re talkin’ like a simp.”

Both men shared a welcome laugh at that.

Kurt took Amanda by the hand and led her away from the others, into a shadowy comer of the dilapidated church. It could be terrifying to go into deadly peril alongside the love of his life, but occasionally there were compensations as well. He could begin celebrating his victories immediately.

Nightcrawler kissed the Gypsy passionately. Exhilaration sang along his nerves. When at last they paused for breath, he whispered, ^!T knew you could do your part to stop Belasco. Without accepting Dracula’s tainted gift.”

“Were you really sure?” she murmured back. “Or were you simply hoping?”

The mutant opened his mouth to answer glibly, then sensing that she genuinely wished to know, responded with the truth instead. “To be honest,” he said, “over the course of the last several hours, I’ve had my doubts about a great many things. Which isn’t like me. But there were aspects of this mission that made me fear that we all might be flawed and inadequate to the challenge, myself most of all.”

“I know what you mean,” Amanda said. “I think that at certain moments everybody felt that way, even Wolverine. It seemed as if Belasco and Dracula were so powerful and clever, so far ahead of us every step of the way, that they could manipulate us like pawns on a chessboard.” She smiled. “But

I don’t imagine anyone feels that anymore.”

“You can rest assured, I don’t. I feel like Errol Flynn. Invincible and amorous.” He pressed his lips to hers.

A few seconds later, she jumped and squealed. “Watch the tail!” she said, giving his chest a playful slap. “At least until we’re really alone.”

Scott was still weary and aching right down to his bones, and was sure that everyone else felt the same. But the sooner they all got safely out of Natchez, and availed themselves of the medical resources in the mansion, the better off they’d be. Holding Jean’s hands, smiling into her bruised and scraped but still lovely features, he asked her, Ready?

More or less, she replied.

With a grunt, slightly surprised at just how quickly he was stiffening up, he rose from their fragment of broken pew, then helped her up and put his arm around her. “Time to go, people!” he called.

The X-Men headed for the vestibule. Her shoulder bandaged, Kitty walked with the black-pointed spear as if it were a staff, the butt thumping on the floor. Piotr limped along with one arm draped over Rogue’s shoulders and the other encircling Nightcrawler’s.

Suddenly Ororo stopped in her tracks. “Look at that!”

“What?” demanded Shadowcat, pivoting and peering about, searching for some new threat.

“The weather,” said Storm, beaming and gesturing at the open doors. “The rain’s stopping. There isn’t going to be a flood.”

As they all stepped out under the open sky, Scott saw that she was unquestionably correct. The masses of thunderheads were breaking up, revealing the beginnings of a pink and golden dawn.

Logan exhaled a plume of pungent smoke. “Looks like it could turn out to be a pretty day,” he said.