"Fever Curse"
May. 17th, 2022 02:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dochermes"Fever Curse"
4/1/1979
I.
The radio was on but she hardly heard it. Katherine Wheatley sat in her room in Kenneth Dred's building and tried to digest the impact of death. Although she had not known Will Murdock well, his death had a crippling effect on her. She had been holding him when he died, lightly touching his mind, and she had felt the lifeforce leave his body. It was impossible to describe this to any one who was not telepathic.
With a groan, she got off the bed and went to turn the radio off. She hated disco in the first place. Suddenly she felt stifled, unable to get a full breath. It was the grief of Kenneth Dred she felt, hanging over this building like a heavy blanket. She had to get out of here. It was not even noon yet, a fine summer day, and she was sitting inside while out there waited New York City. Katherine went to change her blouse, she was wearing black shoes and navy blue slacks, and she put on a loose white top with long sleeves and a U-cut neckline. She paused to brush her hair and check herself in the mirror over the dresser. At nineteen, she was pretty without being gorgeous, a slim blue-eyed girl with long straight black hair. Her eyes looked back at her somberly. Enough of this. She left the room where Dred let her stay while she learned how to use her powers and trotted down the wide staircase to the front hall.
There was a memo pad on a cabinet by the door, and she paused just long enough to write "WENT FOR WALK Be back in a few hours K." and stepped out onto East 38th Street. For the next hour, she wandered aimlessly, window-shopping and glancing into the minds of passing strangers. The endless variety of emotions tickled around her awareness. Many minds were petty and mean-spirited, but there were still many with kindness and optimism. The unwavering love between an old man and his dog, sitting on a stoop, lifted her spirits immensely. Life went on.
By the time she neared Central Park, Katherine felt back to normal. She was young. She needed to live. She bought a hot pretzel with mustard and munched it with satisfaction. A hair salon had a huge sign in the window, WALKS-IN WELCOME, and she took it as an invitation. She was so tired of those bangs, they made her look like an English schoolgirl still in her uniform. Katherine marched in, with no awareness of a fat man and a gaunt woman watching from a block away, who had followed her from 8th Street. They knew how to block their thoughts.
When she emerged, her hair shorter and parted on the right, she felt immeasurably freer. What was she doing, living in that great empty museum of a building with an elderly scholar and his savage bodyguard. Kenneth Dred was a dear and treated her well, but what more could he teach her? And Jeremy Bane... ugh. The Dire Wolf. How could she have thought there was any chance for something between them? He was cold and hard as those knives he wore day and night.
In the salon, with its two attendants, a woman and a man walked in. She created a distraction by slipping and falling to the floor. She cried out as if in pain, and while both attendants were helping her up, the man quickly knelt and snatched up a handful of black hair clippings from the floor. His eyebrows lowered as he smiled, making his grin remarkably sinister.
Katherine emerged from the subway (or underground, as she sometimes still thought of it) near Cooper Square and walked to a used book store at the edge of Greenwich Village. Bane was there, inspecting a crate of rare books from Asia. This was the duty that William Murdock had handled for years and, now that he was gone, it had fallen to Bane to maintain the constant flow of occult material to Dred. At just twenty-one, Jeremy Bane was a thin young man with fine-textured black hair and dreadful grey eyes in a narrow face, eyes that seemed to regard the entire world warily. Even in the July heat, he wore all black. When Katherine walked up, he greeted her politely and even noticed her new hairdo, but he certainly did not seem glad to see her. Bane said he had to get these books home, and if she wanted she could ride with him.
She accepted the lift and went with him to where Dred's long Lincoln sedan was parked. She had stopped trying to open him up emotionally, but as she got in the passenger seat, she again felt the strangest mixture of attraction and unease. His mind was so tightly sealed that she couldn't read it. Once in a while, she might catch a stray thought but for the most part he was a blank wall. Maybe that was why she kept feeling interested, she reflected. Being able to read minds since puberty, she had never really been in love. A relationship couldn't develop. Bane remained a mystery to her and she was drawn to this. It couldn't be anything serious of course, but still....
II.
In a darkened basement dank and humid, six men and six women knelt in a circle around a table of rough black stone, behind which was a standing thirteenth man. All were bundled in heavy scarlet robes, gloved and cowled so no flesh showed. A low tripod burned with oil smoke and the odor of mimosa hung in the air. The coven leader opened a folded paper and held it high.
"He who walks in the winds of the evening, he who is seen only in shadows, hear us."
"Enas-GOTH!" chanted the congregation of Red Sect on a rising note.
"We who will be rewarded when the Earth is cleansed, call thee. Hear us."
"Enas-GOTH!"
"Slayer of those who impede our work for thy glory, hear us."
"Enas-GOTH!"
"As this burns, so let its owner burn," intoned the thirteenth man. "She who aids our mortal enemies, let her burn and be consumed even as this is burned and is consumed." He flung the packet into the smoking flame and there was the stench of burning human hair.
III.
"She has the highest fever I've ever seen, young man. We can't find an infection. I've put her on a saline IV and we're cooling her with ice packs but even so...." The doctor was a middle-aged Pakistani man with thick glasses and a balding head. He avoided meeting the cold glare of those pale eyes that fixed on him. "I can't say how long she has. I'm very sorry." The doctor pulled the dividing curtain shut behind him as he left after being paged.
Bane hated emergency rooms. He had seen so many deaths for such a young man. Now he glared down at the suffering girl. Her skin was red and dry, her breathing rapid and shallow. She was going to die and all the proud science in this huge hospital could not help. Kenneth Dred had told him he was the result of a malevolent spell. Some enemy had obtained a part of her - a drop of blood, a fingernail clipping, a bit of hair. Hadn't they warned her about that? Or was it that, even after these months, she still did not fully believe in the fierce menace of the Midnight War?
Furious, he paced back and forth, fists clenched like rock. All of his famous fighting skill was useless. Mr Dred was searching through his notes for a counterspell but he was a scholar, not a sorceror, and even if he found something it might not work. None of the friends Dred knew with abilities that might help could be reached. Bane cursed in his head. He had never felt so inadequate. There should be some set-up where good people in the Midnight War could work together, be on call as these doctors were. Who was there he could call?
Suddenly, he knew. Khang! Khang could help. For Bane, there was no disconnect between thought and action. As soon as he remembered the silver man, he raced from the ER, out through the double doors and into the late night streets. Now he ran through the darkness faster than a car could have kept up pn busy city streets, a grim black blur that leaped and swerved around the occasional passers-by. It had been less than two weeks since Khang had first appeared, little more than a week since the silver man had inadvertently killed Will Murdock by blasting his spirit while it was out of body. They had sullenly made peace. Khang had been new and untrained, and did not know what he had done. In penance, he had agreed to aid if summoned.
There stood the condemned furniture warehouse, with its windows boarded and the yellow tag that read UNFIT FOR HUMAN HABITATION. No light showed under the doors. Bane sped up to that door and crashed it inward with a kick. In a dim haze of illumination from a grimy skylight, Khang turned to face him. Bundled in a long topcoat and baggy pants, with a slouch hat and wool scarf to conceal him as much as possible, he was still an imposing sight. Well over seven feet tall, with wide shoulders and a broad chest, Khang somehow seemed to be still bigger than he was.. as if there was more to him than Human eyes could see. The deep resonant voice seemed to come from all directions at once. "Jeremy Bane?"
"Khang! I need your help. Remember our pact? It's the girl, Katherine."
The giant stepped slowly forward. "What of her?"
"Someone put a curse on her. She's burning up with fever. You have to help her," he said in a voice close to pleading.
"What I can do, I will. We fought when we first met, Dire Wolf, yet did I not say even then we have a common cause?"
"Will you come ON!" Bane snapped.
"There is no need to walk. I can see in your thoughts where she is." Khang raised one huge hand and Bane saw again that the giant's skin seemed to be silver, flexible and burnished. There came a burst of pitiless white light, a split-second sensation of heat and motion, and when the glare faded, the two of them were standing behind the partition over the hospital bed where Katherine Wheatley lay dying.
It was empty.
The light sheet was crumpled on the floor, as was the backless disposable gown. Her own clothes were gone. Bane took a deep shuddering breath. "I couldn't have been gone more than fifteen minutes. How could they have known? They must have been watching when I left Mr Dred's building."
"Who?"
"Whoever is behind this. I don't know. Damnit, how can we trace them? How did they get her out of here?"
A third voice grumbled, "Never mind that, what are you two doing in here?" It was a security officer, overweight and red-faced but still tough-looking. Probably a retired cop. "I'm not going to ask you twice."
Impatiently, Bane snapped open a leather document case. It carried a documents authorizing him as an investigator for Kenneth Dred, a name well-known and respected by the NYPD.
"Jeremy Bane, huh? I heard of you, son, and for my money, you're just a street punk. But if Dred sponsors you, I guess you're kosher."
"Fine. What happened here? Who took the girl?"
"Wish we knew," the security man admitted. "Two men barged in and hauled her out, and when a doctor tried to get in their way, they killed him."
"Killed him-- how?"
"Well, it's not clear. Hard to say. The staff said there was a bright red light and a loud noise, so it must have been a firearm of some kind. And yet, no entry hole in the victim. He's burned as if he got hit by lightning."
Khang spoke for the first time in his unnerving rumble. "Warlocks of some skill! To lay a spell of inner flame and then to strike down a man with a gralic bolt is no novice's feat. This is the work of Red Sect."
"Red WHAT?" demanded the officer.
"Of course," Bane said. "Red Sect. Mr Dred got in their way last year and caused them lots of trouble. It's got to be them. Clinton Lundborg, that bastard, he's going to pay. Khang, do you know where they are?"
"I can follow their trail from here," answered the silver man. "Are you ready, Jeremy?"
"Damn right! Let's go get them!"
"Hey, I didn't say you two were going anywhere, the police are on their way-" The security man was cut short by an explosion of white light filled the room with deafening thunder. He fell over backwards, ears ringing and eyes blurred. When he manage to struggle back to his feet, he was alone and he never got the slightest clue what had happened that night.
IV.
In the cellar, on an altar of rough black stone which had held many victims before her, Katherine Wheatley was bound with coarse rope. The fever was raging now, and she stirred in uneasy delirium. The twelve cultists of Red Sect knelt in a circle around her, staring with unsympathetic eyes. These were spoiled heartless children of wealth, using sorcery to indulge themselves and to punish anyone who affronted them. The thirteenth man, Eric Lundborg, was of average height but stocky, with a protruding belly showing under the loose crimson robe. In his gloved hand was raised a long-bladed dagger of copper-colored metal which gleamed as if red-hot.
"Our hour has come!" Lundborg announced. "Kenneth Dred was our most persistant foe, but he is aged and near his end. I do not think he will see the winter. Now we must look to his assistants before they can carry on his crusade against us. This girl, this mind-reading freak, might have led the Dire Wolf and the silver man to us but she will never speak again. We live under the hand of Enas-Goth!" he suddenly cried.
"Enas-GOTH!" came the response.
"With this blade of sacred Gremthom metal forged on Maroch itself, we will strike. I will claim this girl's spirit at the height of her despair. Already this blade is nearly the equal of Hellspawn itself. With a virgin's soul bound within, it will be totally invincible. Nothing will survive its kiss,...not even Khang. We live to serve Enas-Goth!"
"Enas-GOTH!" howled the cultists.
"Nor is that all," Lundborg gloated, waving the red blade in his excitement. "We expect the heir of Kenneth Dred to try to intevene. Let them. I have rigged a shotgun in the doorway. We will phone Dred to tell him of this girl's death and he will send his young hoodlum here. When that door is opened, both barrels will fire right in his face and send him to the Hell he deserves. We carry on the glory of Enas-Goth!"
"Enas-GOTH!" they cried as Katherine moaned.
V.
Outside a red brick home on the residential outskirts of Queens, two figures appeared in a flash of white light. Bane swung in a circle, his .45 in hand. Six expensive cars stood in the driveway or along the street. It was close to three in the morning, and the nearby houses were all dark. Bane started toward the front door, with its wrought-iron lamps on either side and a flower box well tended to one side. He hesitated. Vague sensations of heat and agony struck at his mind. He tried to open up his perceptions, almost listening with his thoughts. It had to be Katherine's unconscious mind, broadcasting its distress in a last desperate call for help. He turned away from the front door, around to the side of the house where a slanting door led down into a cellar. He saw a metal handled shovel leaning against the side of the house, snatched it up and used it to snap open the padlock. Flinging the shovel aside, the Dire Wolf flung the door up and dove inside.
Standing in the dim light of the tripod, Lundborg had unbuttoned Katherine's blouse and rested the point of the copper-colored dagger under her left breast, just over the heart. He slid the blade slightly, scraping the skin, stretching the sadistic joy as long as he could. Tightening his grip, the master of Red Sect raised the knife overhead.
When Khang yanked open the front door, it tightened two wires which pulled both triggers of a double-barrelled shotgun propped up on a chair at chest height. The blast caught him point-blank and the unexpected impact drove him back a few feet.
At the time the blast sounded, Bane was leaping down into the cellar. He knew the Silver man would not be harmed by any mortal weapon and didn't worry about him. With the automatic holstered, he charged straight at the coven.
Lundborg squawked in undignified alarm and flung the gremthom dagger with murderous aim. But the blade that might have sliced even Khang did not harm Bane. Few Humans could have matched what the Dire Wolf did without thinking, for his lean hand darted up and caught the flying dagger by its hilt, throwing it back so swiftly that it seemed that he had merely swatted it like a softball. The last thing Eric Lundborg felt was the hot metal sliding into his heart and the last thing he saw was the hard face of Jeremy Bane glaring at him.
Without their leader, the cultists broke and fled screaming. Bane drew his gun but held his fire. As much as he was tempted, he did not shoot them in the backs as they fled in panic. "That's right," he yelled. "Go running to your Enas-Goth!" He holstered the automatic and rushed to where Katherine was bound. Her breath rasped and she was shaking as the fever curse reached its climax. Bane drew one of his silver daggers from its sheath on his forearm and cut through the ropes. "Katherine! Can you hear me?"
Khang stepped up, brushing Bane aside and pressed a gleaming silver hand on her hot forehead. Gentle white gralic force flowed through him like cool water, soothing, breaking the spell. "We have come in time," he said. "She is weakened and dehydrated, Jeremy. But she will live."
The Dire Wolf gingerly touched her skin and found it normal. She had broken into a heavy sweat. "Thank God," he mumbled.
"Your words are more true than you know," observed Khang. "You do not know my Source." He strode over and tugged the deep red blade from Lundborg's corpse. The silver hand glowed blindingly and the knife softened, melted and was gone. "All is well. This warlock has died by his own weapon, as he deserves. And the girl is safe."
"For now," Bane said. He buttoned her blouse and lifted her in his arms, her head against his chest. "This has to be the last straw for her. I want Mr Dred to send her home and away from people like us." Followed by Khang, he carried her out of the muggy cellar and out into the cool early morning air.
4/11/2013
4/1/1979
I.
The radio was on but she hardly heard it. Katherine Wheatley sat in her room in Kenneth Dred's building and tried to digest the impact of death. Although she had not known Will Murdock well, his death had a crippling effect on her. She had been holding him when he died, lightly touching his mind, and she had felt the lifeforce leave his body. It was impossible to describe this to any one who was not telepathic.
With a groan, she got off the bed and went to turn the radio off. She hated disco in the first place. Suddenly she felt stifled, unable to get a full breath. It was the grief of Kenneth Dred she felt, hanging over this building like a heavy blanket. She had to get out of here. It was not even noon yet, a fine summer day, and she was sitting inside while out there waited New York City. Katherine went to change her blouse, she was wearing black shoes and navy blue slacks, and she put on a loose white top with long sleeves and a U-cut neckline. She paused to brush her hair and check herself in the mirror over the dresser. At nineteen, she was pretty without being gorgeous, a slim blue-eyed girl with long straight black hair. Her eyes looked back at her somberly. Enough of this. She left the room where Dred let her stay while she learned how to use her powers and trotted down the wide staircase to the front hall.
There was a memo pad on a cabinet by the door, and she paused just long enough to write "WENT FOR WALK Be back in a few hours K." and stepped out onto East 38th Street. For the next hour, she wandered aimlessly, window-shopping and glancing into the minds of passing strangers. The endless variety of emotions tickled around her awareness. Many minds were petty and mean-spirited, but there were still many with kindness and optimism. The unwavering love between an old man and his dog, sitting on a stoop, lifted her spirits immensely. Life went on.
By the time she neared Central Park, Katherine felt back to normal. She was young. She needed to live. She bought a hot pretzel with mustard and munched it with satisfaction. A hair salon had a huge sign in the window, WALKS-IN WELCOME, and she took it as an invitation. She was so tired of those bangs, they made her look like an English schoolgirl still in her uniform. Katherine marched in, with no awareness of a fat man and a gaunt woman watching from a block away, who had followed her from 8th Street. They knew how to block their thoughts.
When she emerged, her hair shorter and parted on the right, she felt immeasurably freer. What was she doing, living in that great empty museum of a building with an elderly scholar and his savage bodyguard. Kenneth Dred was a dear and treated her well, but what more could he teach her? And Jeremy Bane... ugh. The Dire Wolf. How could she have thought there was any chance for something between them? He was cold and hard as those knives he wore day and night.
In the salon, with its two attendants, a woman and a man walked in. She created a distraction by slipping and falling to the floor. She cried out as if in pain, and while both attendants were helping her up, the man quickly knelt and snatched up a handful of black hair clippings from the floor. His eyebrows lowered as he smiled, making his grin remarkably sinister.
Katherine emerged from the subway (or underground, as she sometimes still thought of it) near Cooper Square and walked to a used book store at the edge of Greenwich Village. Bane was there, inspecting a crate of rare books from Asia. This was the duty that William Murdock had handled for years and, now that he was gone, it had fallen to Bane to maintain the constant flow of occult material to Dred. At just twenty-one, Jeremy Bane was a thin young man with fine-textured black hair and dreadful grey eyes in a narrow face, eyes that seemed to regard the entire world warily. Even in the July heat, he wore all black. When Katherine walked up, he greeted her politely and even noticed her new hairdo, but he certainly did not seem glad to see her. Bane said he had to get these books home, and if she wanted she could ride with him.
She accepted the lift and went with him to where Dred's long Lincoln sedan was parked. She had stopped trying to open him up emotionally, but as she got in the passenger seat, she again felt the strangest mixture of attraction and unease. His mind was so tightly sealed that she couldn't read it. Once in a while, she might catch a stray thought but for the most part he was a blank wall. Maybe that was why she kept feeling interested, she reflected. Being able to read minds since puberty, she had never really been in love. A relationship couldn't develop. Bane remained a mystery to her and she was drawn to this. It couldn't be anything serious of course, but still....
II.
In a darkened basement dank and humid, six men and six women knelt in a circle around a table of rough black stone, behind which was a standing thirteenth man. All were bundled in heavy scarlet robes, gloved and cowled so no flesh showed. A low tripod burned with oil smoke and the odor of mimosa hung in the air. The coven leader opened a folded paper and held it high.
"He who walks in the winds of the evening, he who is seen only in shadows, hear us."
"Enas-GOTH!" chanted the congregation of Red Sect on a rising note.
"We who will be rewarded when the Earth is cleansed, call thee. Hear us."
"Enas-GOTH!"
"Slayer of those who impede our work for thy glory, hear us."
"Enas-GOTH!"
"As this burns, so let its owner burn," intoned the thirteenth man. "She who aids our mortal enemies, let her burn and be consumed even as this is burned and is consumed." He flung the packet into the smoking flame and there was the stench of burning human hair.
III.
"She has the highest fever I've ever seen, young man. We can't find an infection. I've put her on a saline IV and we're cooling her with ice packs but even so...." The doctor was a middle-aged Pakistani man with thick glasses and a balding head. He avoided meeting the cold glare of those pale eyes that fixed on him. "I can't say how long she has. I'm very sorry." The doctor pulled the dividing curtain shut behind him as he left after being paged.
Bane hated emergency rooms. He had seen so many deaths for such a young man. Now he glared down at the suffering girl. Her skin was red and dry, her breathing rapid and shallow. She was going to die and all the proud science in this huge hospital could not help. Kenneth Dred had told him he was the result of a malevolent spell. Some enemy had obtained a part of her - a drop of blood, a fingernail clipping, a bit of hair. Hadn't they warned her about that? Or was it that, even after these months, she still did not fully believe in the fierce menace of the Midnight War?
Furious, he paced back and forth, fists clenched like rock. All of his famous fighting skill was useless. Mr Dred was searching through his notes for a counterspell but he was a scholar, not a sorceror, and even if he found something it might not work. None of the friends Dred knew with abilities that might help could be reached. Bane cursed in his head. He had never felt so inadequate. There should be some set-up where good people in the Midnight War could work together, be on call as these doctors were. Who was there he could call?
Suddenly, he knew. Khang! Khang could help. For Bane, there was no disconnect between thought and action. As soon as he remembered the silver man, he raced from the ER, out through the double doors and into the late night streets. Now he ran through the darkness faster than a car could have kept up pn busy city streets, a grim black blur that leaped and swerved around the occasional passers-by. It had been less than two weeks since Khang had first appeared, little more than a week since the silver man had inadvertently killed Will Murdock by blasting his spirit while it was out of body. They had sullenly made peace. Khang had been new and untrained, and did not know what he had done. In penance, he had agreed to aid if summoned.
There stood the condemned furniture warehouse, with its windows boarded and the yellow tag that read UNFIT FOR HUMAN HABITATION. No light showed under the doors. Bane sped up to that door and crashed it inward with a kick. In a dim haze of illumination from a grimy skylight, Khang turned to face him. Bundled in a long topcoat and baggy pants, with a slouch hat and wool scarf to conceal him as much as possible, he was still an imposing sight. Well over seven feet tall, with wide shoulders and a broad chest, Khang somehow seemed to be still bigger than he was.. as if there was more to him than Human eyes could see. The deep resonant voice seemed to come from all directions at once. "Jeremy Bane?"
"Khang! I need your help. Remember our pact? It's the girl, Katherine."
The giant stepped slowly forward. "What of her?"
"Someone put a curse on her. She's burning up with fever. You have to help her," he said in a voice close to pleading.
"What I can do, I will. We fought when we first met, Dire Wolf, yet did I not say even then we have a common cause?"
"Will you come ON!" Bane snapped.
"There is no need to walk. I can see in your thoughts where she is." Khang raised one huge hand and Bane saw again that the giant's skin seemed to be silver, flexible and burnished. There came a burst of pitiless white light, a split-second sensation of heat and motion, and when the glare faded, the two of them were standing behind the partition over the hospital bed where Katherine Wheatley lay dying.
It was empty.
The light sheet was crumpled on the floor, as was the backless disposable gown. Her own clothes were gone. Bane took a deep shuddering breath. "I couldn't have been gone more than fifteen minutes. How could they have known? They must have been watching when I left Mr Dred's building."
"Who?"
"Whoever is behind this. I don't know. Damnit, how can we trace them? How did they get her out of here?"
A third voice grumbled, "Never mind that, what are you two doing in here?" It was a security officer, overweight and red-faced but still tough-looking. Probably a retired cop. "I'm not going to ask you twice."
Impatiently, Bane snapped open a leather document case. It carried a documents authorizing him as an investigator for Kenneth Dred, a name well-known and respected by the NYPD.
"Jeremy Bane, huh? I heard of you, son, and for my money, you're just a street punk. But if Dred sponsors you, I guess you're kosher."
"Fine. What happened here? Who took the girl?"
"Wish we knew," the security man admitted. "Two men barged in and hauled her out, and when a doctor tried to get in their way, they killed him."
"Killed him-- how?"
"Well, it's not clear. Hard to say. The staff said there was a bright red light and a loud noise, so it must have been a firearm of some kind. And yet, no entry hole in the victim. He's burned as if he got hit by lightning."
Khang spoke for the first time in his unnerving rumble. "Warlocks of some skill! To lay a spell of inner flame and then to strike down a man with a gralic bolt is no novice's feat. This is the work of Red Sect."
"Red WHAT?" demanded the officer.
"Of course," Bane said. "Red Sect. Mr Dred got in their way last year and caused them lots of trouble. It's got to be them. Clinton Lundborg, that bastard, he's going to pay. Khang, do you know where they are?"
"I can follow their trail from here," answered the silver man. "Are you ready, Jeremy?"
"Damn right! Let's go get them!"
"Hey, I didn't say you two were going anywhere, the police are on their way-" The security man was cut short by an explosion of white light filled the room with deafening thunder. He fell over backwards, ears ringing and eyes blurred. When he manage to struggle back to his feet, he was alone and he never got the slightest clue what had happened that night.
IV.
In the cellar, on an altar of rough black stone which had held many victims before her, Katherine Wheatley was bound with coarse rope. The fever was raging now, and she stirred in uneasy delirium. The twelve cultists of Red Sect knelt in a circle around her, staring with unsympathetic eyes. These were spoiled heartless children of wealth, using sorcery to indulge themselves and to punish anyone who affronted them. The thirteenth man, Eric Lundborg, was of average height but stocky, with a protruding belly showing under the loose crimson robe. In his gloved hand was raised a long-bladed dagger of copper-colored metal which gleamed as if red-hot.
"Our hour has come!" Lundborg announced. "Kenneth Dred was our most persistant foe, but he is aged and near his end. I do not think he will see the winter. Now we must look to his assistants before they can carry on his crusade against us. This girl, this mind-reading freak, might have led the Dire Wolf and the silver man to us but she will never speak again. We live under the hand of Enas-Goth!" he suddenly cried.
"Enas-GOTH!" came the response.
"With this blade of sacred Gremthom metal forged on Maroch itself, we will strike. I will claim this girl's spirit at the height of her despair. Already this blade is nearly the equal of Hellspawn itself. With a virgin's soul bound within, it will be totally invincible. Nothing will survive its kiss,...not even Khang. We live to serve Enas-Goth!"
"Enas-GOTH!" howled the cultists.
"Nor is that all," Lundborg gloated, waving the red blade in his excitement. "We expect the heir of Kenneth Dred to try to intevene. Let them. I have rigged a shotgun in the doorway. We will phone Dred to tell him of this girl's death and he will send his young hoodlum here. When that door is opened, both barrels will fire right in his face and send him to the Hell he deserves. We carry on the glory of Enas-Goth!"
"Enas-GOTH!" they cried as Katherine moaned.
V.
Outside a red brick home on the residential outskirts of Queens, two figures appeared in a flash of white light. Bane swung in a circle, his .45 in hand. Six expensive cars stood in the driveway or along the street. It was close to three in the morning, and the nearby houses were all dark. Bane started toward the front door, with its wrought-iron lamps on either side and a flower box well tended to one side. He hesitated. Vague sensations of heat and agony struck at his mind. He tried to open up his perceptions, almost listening with his thoughts. It had to be Katherine's unconscious mind, broadcasting its distress in a last desperate call for help. He turned away from the front door, around to the side of the house where a slanting door led down into a cellar. He saw a metal handled shovel leaning against the side of the house, snatched it up and used it to snap open the padlock. Flinging the shovel aside, the Dire Wolf flung the door up and dove inside.
Standing in the dim light of the tripod, Lundborg had unbuttoned Katherine's blouse and rested the point of the copper-colored dagger under her left breast, just over the heart. He slid the blade slightly, scraping the skin, stretching the sadistic joy as long as he could. Tightening his grip, the master of Red Sect raised the knife overhead.
When Khang yanked open the front door, it tightened two wires which pulled both triggers of a double-barrelled shotgun propped up on a chair at chest height. The blast caught him point-blank and the unexpected impact drove him back a few feet.
At the time the blast sounded, Bane was leaping down into the cellar. He knew the Silver man would not be harmed by any mortal weapon and didn't worry about him. With the automatic holstered, he charged straight at the coven.
Lundborg squawked in undignified alarm and flung the gremthom dagger with murderous aim. But the blade that might have sliced even Khang did not harm Bane. Few Humans could have matched what the Dire Wolf did without thinking, for his lean hand darted up and caught the flying dagger by its hilt, throwing it back so swiftly that it seemed that he had merely swatted it like a softball. The last thing Eric Lundborg felt was the hot metal sliding into his heart and the last thing he saw was the hard face of Jeremy Bane glaring at him.
Without their leader, the cultists broke and fled screaming. Bane drew his gun but held his fire. As much as he was tempted, he did not shoot them in the backs as they fled in panic. "That's right," he yelled. "Go running to your Enas-Goth!" He holstered the automatic and rushed to where Katherine was bound. Her breath rasped and she was shaking as the fever curse reached its climax. Bane drew one of his silver daggers from its sheath on his forearm and cut through the ropes. "Katherine! Can you hear me?"
Khang stepped up, brushing Bane aside and pressed a gleaming silver hand on her hot forehead. Gentle white gralic force flowed through him like cool water, soothing, breaking the spell. "We have come in time," he said. "She is weakened and dehydrated, Jeremy. But she will live."
The Dire Wolf gingerly touched her skin and found it normal. She had broken into a heavy sweat. "Thank God," he mumbled.
"Your words are more true than you know," observed Khang. "You do not know my Source." He strode over and tugged the deep red blade from Lundborg's corpse. The silver hand glowed blindingly and the knife softened, melted and was gone. "All is well. This warlock has died by his own weapon, as he deserves. And the girl is safe."
"For now," Bane said. He buttoned her blouse and lifted her in his arms, her head against his chest. "This has to be the last straw for her. I want Mr Dred to send her home and away from people like us." Followed by Khang, he carried her out of the muggy cellar and out into the cool early morning air.
4/11/2013
