dochermes

"The Final Tournament of Wu Lung"

9/1987

I.

On a windy hill overlooking Kowloon, two rival schools sat facing each other across a fifty-foot-wide flat area covered with hard mats. Two dozen students of Winter Snow in their white canvas gis knelt in a row along one side, glaring murderously at their enemies. Sitting crosslegged across from them were an equal number of Black Mantis students in their loose black silk uniforms. None had moved in the slightest since taking their places. These schools had hated their rivals for generations. This was a bitter feud where grandsons of original students now hated grandsons of the other school's founding students.

Seated side by side in matching gilt chairs were the elderly masters of their schools, Sifu and Sensei, both attentive as they watched their best fighters step onto the mats. On poles behind the teachers, their respective white and black pennants snapped in the breeze. It was cool, almost chilly this high above the water.

Both fighters were young Asian men in their twenties, both fit and hard-muscled, wearing the uniforms of their schools. In the white gi of Winter Snow, Shimura Ikio stood only an inch over six feet in height, with thick brawny arms and heavily callused hands. His hair was cropped so short it might as well have been shaved. The broad face was kept deadpan, nearly without expression.

Facing him was Chen Wong-Lai. Son of the Dragon of Midnight, Chen had removed his shirt and wore only the loose baggy trousers and slippers. A few inches shorter than his opponent, ten pounds lighter, Chen's torso showed wiry sleek muscles with sharp definition. He seemed to have zero body fat. His coarse black hair was shaggy, even untidy, over a narrow face that was set in stern resolute lines.

Meeting in the center of the mats, the fighters turned and bowed, not to their own schools but to their opponents. Then they stood side by side and bowed more deeply to the Sensei and Sifu, who inclined their heads respectfully. Finally, Chen and Shimura moved back and bowed to each other as minimally as possible, then dropped into ready stances.

Winter Snow was a hard style. Shimura came in fast and direct with a front snap kick to the lower stomach but Chen swept it to the inner side with the heel of his palm, swinging Shimura half around. The Winter Snow fighter was now awkardly standing with his right side to his opponent. In the instant before Shimura regained his footing, Chen lunged in quick as any fencer and exploded a short straight jab that caught the Winter Snow fighter directly in the center of the face with a sharp cracking noise. Shimura fell hard onto his back, rolled and hopped back up onto his feet ten feet away.

Too well disciplined to cheer or even show the faintest smile, the Black Mantis warriors could not entirely keep approval from their eyes.

Instead of becoming more cautious, the Winter Snow karateka charged forward more aggressively, turning on his left heel to whip out a high side kick to the chest. He was just outmatched. Moving much quicker and with greater assurance, Chen Wong-Lai swiveled his body like a matador and crashed his elbow deep into Shimura's side just below the armpit level. That blow hurt and disoriented. Shimura's defenses went down completely.

Planting his feet, torquing up power from his hips and core, Chen looped a wide haymaker that connected perfectly to the side of Shimura's jaw with a crunching sound. The Japanese fighter sagged to his knees and then over on to his side. Chen stepped back discreetly.

From his gilt throne, the Sensei clapped his hands sharply and two of the Winter Snow students leaped up to carry Shimura away where a healer waited. The two leaders of the rival shools nodded to each other without discussion, and the Winter Snow master reached over to tug on the cord which lowered his white and red pennant to half mast. Remaining atop in triumph, the sinister flag of the Black Mantis snapped and unfurled in the wind.

The students of the two schools remained silent as they walked off in different slopes down the hill. The winter Snow fighters made their way down the winding tree-lined path to the road where their chartered bus awaited them. The battered Shimura was walking with some assistance, indicating some hope he would be okay.

In contrast, once the Black Mantis students were out of sight from the arena, they began to buzz with low enthusiastic discussion. Cantonese was officially the language used in their school but there were still many comments in English and Mandarin. They vanished with triumph into the dorm building.

Chen Wong-Lai remained behind, quietly picking up his black tunic and tugging it on as his Sifu watched. The stocky old man with a wispy white beard and sideburns rose and came over to watch him thoughtfully.

"The Winter Snow will not be eager to challenge our House again soon," said the old man.

"I am honored to represent Black Mantis," Chen answered with a proper bow.

"Your skills are all that can be asked, young Chen. And yet, in today's fight as several other times recently, I saw you draw on other resources beside what Black Mantis provides. We do not throw wild roundhouse punches like John Wayne, nor do we use the footwork of a fencer wielding an epee. I have hinted before that this mimgling is not your best interests."

"Your words are true, esteemed one," Chen replied with as much meekness as he could pretend. "When the opponent provides an opening, my body takes adavantage of it. This is my shortcoming and I do not know how to overcome it."

The Sifu raised a single reproving finger. "Let that pass for the moment. I am informed a visitor has come here to see you."

"I expect no such visitor, Teacher."

"Go to the gazebo at the front gates, young Chen. There you will find a man named Mikage Tatsuo awaiting...the Iron Ronin."

( the rest of the story )

IX.

Recklessly they plunged down the winding stair, and by the time they had reached the first floor level, Bane's groping hand felt a door. Even as he found the catch, it moved under his fingers. Their noise must have been heard through the wall, for the panel opened, and a shaven head poked in, framed in the square of light. The Gelengi blinked in the darkness, and Bane brought an iron-hard fist down on his head, experiencing a vengeful satisfaction as he felt the skull give way with a crack. The man fell face down in the narrow opening and Bane sprang over his body into the outer room without taking time to learn if there were others. But the chamber was empty. It was thickly carpeted, the walls hung with black velvet tapestries. The doors were of bronze-bound teak, with gilt-worked arches. Shiro entered right behind him.

Ignorant as they were of the house, one way was as good as another. Bane chose a door at random and flung it open, revealing a wide corridor carpeted and tapestried like the chamber. At the other end, through wide satin curtains that hung from roof to floor, a file of men was just disappearing... tall, black-silk clad Gelengi, heads bent somberly, like a train of monks. They did not look back.

"Follow them!" said Bane. "They must be headed for the execution!"

"I'm warning you again about ordering me around," Shiro snapped right back at him. "We're going to have a little sparring later to straighten you out. You're not my boss." But with the last word, the Tiger Fury was already sweeping down the corridor like a vengeful whirlwind. The thick carpet deadened their footfalls, so even Bane's boots made no noise.

Shiro would have burst headlong through the curtains, because he was already drawing breath for a tiger roar, if Bane had not seized him by a shoulder. The Tiger Fury's sinews felt like bundles of wire under the Dire Wolf's hands, and Bane doubted his own ability to restrain him forcibly, but that moment's pause was enough. Shiro shrugged loose and reluctantly calmed down. Bane felt more trepidation at annoying his partner beyond endurance than he did at facing the Gelengi.

Squeezing past him, Bane gazed between the curtains. There was a great double-valved door there, but it was partly open, and he looked into the room beyond. Shiro's face was jammed hard against his neck as the Tiger Fury glared over his shoulder at the sight within.

X.

It was a large chamber, hung like the others with purple velvet on which golden lions reared up. There were thick rugs, and stained glass lanterns hanging from the ivory-inlaid ceiling cast a red glow. Black-robed men who ranged along the wall might have been shadows but for their glittering eyes.

On a throne-like chair of ebony sat a grim figure, motionless except when its loose robes stirred in the faintly moving air. The Alchemist's throne was set against a side wall. No one stood near him as he sat in solitary magnificence, like an idol brooding on human doom. In the center of the room stood what looked uncomfortably like a sacrificial altar, a curiously carved block of stone that might have come out of the heart of some desolation.

Naked on that stone lay Rook, white as a marble statue, her arms outstretched like a crucifix, her hands and feet extending over the edges of the block. Her dilated eyes stared upward as one lost to hope, aware of doom and eager only for death to put an end to agony. The physical torture had not yet begun, but a gaunt brute squatted on his haunches at the end of the altar, heating the point of a bronze rod in a dish full of glowing coals.

Bane made no outcry but he felt an outrage he had never known before. Then he was hurled aside as Shiro burst into the room like a bronze whirlwind. Temur Kasten started upright with a startled gasp as the Tiger Fury came tearing forward in a headlong blast of destruction. The torturer sprang up just in time to meet a whirling heel to the side of the jaw that audibly broke his neck.

"Margoth! Margoth!" was a howl from a score of Gelengi throats.

"Screw your Margoth!" yelled Shiro in return, smashing through the crowd so smoothly they seemed to be co-operating. He threw himself on the altar, tugging at Rook's bonds with a frenzy while still trying not to harm her.

From all sides the black-robed figures swarmed in, not noticing in their confusion that the Tiger Fury had been followed by another grim figure who attacked with less abandon but with equal ferocity.

They were aware of Bane only when he cut through the mob, striking men right and left, bowling them over broken and ruined, and reached the altar through the gap made in the bewildered throng. Shiro had freed the girl and he wheeled to face the assassins, his bared teeth gleaming.

"You want her back, come and get her!" he spat in the faces of the oncoming Gelengi. The Tiger Fury crouched as if about to spring into the midst of them, but then whirled and instead rushed headlong at the ebony throne.

The speed and unexpectedness of the move was stunning. With a choked cry Temur Kasten fired and missed at point-blank range and he had no second chance. Shiro pinned the man against the wall with a foot in the throat. Leg fully extended and rigid as a steel bar, he pressed until he felt the Alchemist's neck break under his foot.

There was a long hissing intake of breath as the Gelengi stared wide-eyed at the black-robed figure crumpled grotesquely among the ruins of the broken throne. Their leader and master, slain in a heartbeat. In the instant that they stood like frozen men, Bane caught up Rook and ran for the nearest door, bellowing: "Shiro! This way! Quick!"

With a howl and a whistling of blades the Gelengi were at his heels. Awareness of steel at his back sped Bane's feet, and Shiro hurtled slantingly across the room to meet him at the door.

"Come on, Jeremy! Down the corridor! I'll cover your retreat!"

"No! You take Rook and run!" Bane literally threw her into the Tiger Fury's arms and wheeled back around in the doorway, raising his fists. It was rare that the Dire Wolf dropped being controlled and calculating in a battle but he was in a cold hard fury then.

XI.

The Gelengi came on as if they were blood-mad. They crammed the doorway full with square snarling faces and squat silk-clad bodies before Bane could slam it shut. The assassins were in each other's way. Knives flicked out at him, gouging and slicing. But he struck full-power punches that shattered and crushed wherever they landed. His blows wreaked havoc among the shapes that strove in the doorway, wedged by the pressure from behind.

It was the healing factor of the Tagra tea diet that allowed him use his hands as hammers. Tiny fractures in his bones sealed up instantly and his fists were not swelling from the hundreds of impacts. Any normal Human would have quickly had two useless masses of soggy flesh on his wrists under those conditions.

He could not close the door then. It was blocked and choked by a ghastly mass of crushed and red-dripping flesh, men dead and dying. Bane wheeled and began running down the corridor. Even he was breathing hard from the exertion. Racing so fast he began staggering, bumping into walls and caroming off them, he reached the further end of the corridor where Shiro was struggling with a lock. Rook was standing now, though she reeled on her feet, and seemed on the point of collapse. The mob was coming down the long corridor full cry behind them.

"Step aside!" yelled Bane, still running headlong and leaping up sideways to crash both feet in a double kick that shattered the lock, burst the bolts out of their sockets and caved in the heavy panels as if they had been cardboard. The next instant they were through and Shiro slammed shut the ruins of the door which sagged on its hinges, but somehow held together. There were heavy metal brackets on each jamb, and Shiro found and dropped an iron bar in place just as the mob surged against it. "I could have done that," the Tiger Fury muttered, "I don't like to show off."

Through the shattered panels the Gelengi howled and thrust their knives. Bane knew that, until they hewed away enough wood to enable them to reach in and dislodge it, the bar across the door would hold the splintered barrier in place. Recovering his wits as he caught his breath, he herded his companions ahead of him with desperate haste. He noticed, as if it had happened to someone else that his outer clothes were mere strips hanging down over the Trom armor. Blood ran freely from his exposed hands, neck and face. The Gelengi were hacking at the door, snarling like jackals over carrion.

The apertures were widening, and through them he saw other Gelengi running down the corridor with rifles. Just as he wondered why they did not shoot through the door,
he saw the reason. They were in a chamber which had been converted into a magazine. Cartridge cases were piled high along the wall, and there was at least one box of dynamite. But he looked in vain for rifles or pistols. Evidently they were stored in another part of the building for security reasons.

Shiro was tugging bolts free on an opposite door, but he paused to glare about and yelping "Hah! That's what we need," he pounced on an open case, snatched something out. Bane veered over and grabbed his wrist.

"Don't throw that! What's wrong with you? You'll blow us all to Hell! They're afraid to shoot into this room, but they'll have that door down in a second or so, and finish us with their knives. Go help Rook!"

"For the last time, stop giving me orders!" the Tiger Fury retorted. "I don't work for you, you're not my boss."

Bane took a breath, "We'll work that out when all this is over."

"You bet we will," Shiro said before turning away.

It was a hand grenade Shiro had found, the only one in an otherwise empty case, as a glance assured Bane. The Dire Wolf threw the door open, slammed it shut behind them as they plunged out into the starlight. Rook was reeling, half carried by the Tiger Fury. She had picked up a cloak from one of the dead Gelengi to wrap around her nakedness. They seemed to have emerged at the back of the house. They ran across an open space, hunted creatures looking for a refuge.

There was a crumbling stone wall about chest-high, and they ran through a wide gap in it, only to halt suddenly. Thirty steps behind the ruined wall rose the steel fence of which Shiro had spoken, a barrier twelve feet high, topped with keen points. The door crashed open behind them and a gun spat venomously. They were in a trap. If they tried to climb the fence the Gelengi had but to pick them off at leisure.

"Down behind the wall!" snarled Bane, shoving Rook behind an uncrumbled section of the stone barrier. "At least we'll make them pay a heavy price, before they take us!"

The door was crowded with snarling faces, now leering in triumph. There were rifles in the hands of a dozen. They knew their victims had no firearms, and could not escape, and they themselves could use rifles without fear. Bullets began to splatter on the stone, then with a single effortless leap, Shiro bounded up to the top of the wall, ripping out the pin of the hand grenade.

Once again he gave out the deep, primal roar of the Tiger Fury and hurled the bomb...not at the group which howled and ducked, but over their heads, into the magazine of gunpowder and dynamite

The next instant a rending crash tore the air apart and a blinding blaze of fire made the darkness flash white. In that glare Bane had a glimpse of Shiro, etched against the flame, hurtling end-over-end backward, arms out-thrown. Then there was utter blackness in which roared the thunder of the fall of the house of Kasten as the shattered walls buckled, the beams splintered, the roof fell in and story after story came crashing down on the crumpled foundations.

XII.

Bane had no way of telling how long he had lay there like a corpse. Blinded, deafened and paralyzed, not to mention covered by falling debris. Even his Tel Shai healing factor took a while to bring him out of the daze. His first realization was that there was something soft under him, something that writhed and whimpered. He had a vague feeling he ought not to hurt this soft something, so he began to shove the broken stones and mortar off him. For some reason, his right arm seemed dead and useless, but eventually he excavated himself and staggered up, looking like a white scarecrow in his dust-covered rags. Groping among the rubble, he grasped a woman and pulled her up as full realization returned to him.

"Rook! Are you hurt?" His own voice seemed to come to him from a great distance; he had to shout to make her hear him. Their eardrums had been almost burst by the concussion. He tried taking her pulse and pressing two fingers to her chest to check her heartbeat but he was too battered to understand any results.

"Not too badly, I think," she faltered in her response. "What the hell happened?"

"Shiro's grenade touched off the dynamite. The house fell in on the Gelengi. We were sheltered by that wall. I guess that's all that saved us."

The wall was a shattered heap of broken stone, half covered by rubble of shattered masonry with broken beams thrust up through the litter, and shards of walls reeling drunkenly. Bane gingerly cradled his broken arm and tried to think, his head swimming.

"What happened to Shiro?" cried Rook, seeming finally to shake off her confusion.

"I'll look for him." Bane dreaded what he expected to find. "He was blown off the wall last I saw."

Stumbling over broken stones and bits of timber, he found the Tiger Fury huddled grotesquely against the steel fence. Bane's tentatively probing fingers told him of broken bones, but the Tiger Fury was still breathing and his heartbeat was strong. Rook came stumbling toward them to fall to her knees beside Shiro. For once, she could not hold back tears.

"He's not like ordinary Humans!" she exclaimed, tears running down her grimy, scratched face. "You Tel Shai knights are hard to kill. Even if we don't get him medical attention he'll live. Listen!" She caught Bane's arm with tense fingers; but he had heard it too, the sputter of a motor that was probably a police launch, coming to investigate the explosion.

Rook was tearing the robe she had taken off a Gelengi to pieces in an effort to staunch the blood that dripped from the Tiger Fury's wounds. Miraculously, in that swollen face, Shiro's pulped lips moved. Bane, bending close, caught fragments of words: "What.. have you got lined up for us next?"

Immensely reassured, Bane said, "Don't worry about being bored," glancing at the ruins which hid the mangled figures that had been dozens of assassins, "The Midnight War isn't going to wind down any time soon."

3/13/2023

"THE HAND WHICH WIELDS THE SCYTHE I"

7/12-7/13/1982

I.

"Why are you so interested in these deaths?" questioned Jeremy Bane, shifting uncomfortably in that spindly chair.

His companion lit a cigarette and Bane observed that her slender hand was none too steady. Rook was widely acknowledged as the most beautiful bad girl in the Midnight War with a tall, supple figure, with long straight black hair down past her shoulder blades and a finely carved face with golden peach skin. Those large dark eyes held a shadow of fear that had never been there before. Anything which could make the shrewd and self-assured Rook afraid had to be taken seriously.

"Murders like these are inexplicable," she said. "And your business is challenging the unknown."

"Tell me more. I'm not convinced."

"It is later than you think," she answered cryptically. "If you do not listen to me, you'll never solve these killings and there will be many more."

The Dire Wolf felt ill at ease in Rook's apartment, with its delicate furniture and dainty aesthetics. He worried about breaking something with every move. "I'm listening."

"But you won't believe. You'll say I'm hysterical, seeing faces in shadows and jumping at harmless noises."

"Look here, Rook," he exclaimed impatiently. "Come to the point. You called me to your apartment and I came because you said you were in deadly danger. But now you're talking riddles about three men who were killed last week. Get right to the point, why don't you?"

"Do you remember Temur Kasten?" she asked abruptly.

"As if anyone is likely to forget him," he said. "Alchemist. Leader of the Gelengi cult. Would-be warlord of Azfahan. I'm glad he's gone."

"No. Kasten has returned," she said.

"What are you talking about?" His grey eyes flared up incredulously. "We saw him take a full magazine of .44s and fall off the Mid-Hudson Bridge."

"Nevertheless, he's come back. After all, Temur Kasten has been reported dead many times in the past hundred years."

Bane did not reply, but sat waiting for further disclosures, certain they would come in an indirect way. It irritated his direct nature that Rook often spoke as obliquely as if giving clues.

"How did those three men die?" she asked, though he was aware that she knew as well as he.

"Kim Park Lee, the Korean herbal merchant, fell from his own roof," he grunted. "The people on the street heard him scream and then saw him come diving down. Might have been an accident but respectable middle-aged merchants don't go climbing around on roofs at midnight.

"Then William Sorenson, the Danish curio dealer, was stung by a yellowjacket and suffered a severe allergic reaction. That happens.

"Jacob Kahane, the real estate developer, was simply knifed in a parking lot. Everything on him was stolen, including his watch and wedding ring. His car hasn't been found."

"And these names suggest nothing to you?" exclaimed the girl, tense with suppressed excitement. "You don't make the connection? Listen, all these men were formerly associated in one way or another with Temur Kasten!"

"Well?" he demanded. "That doesn't necessarily mean that Kasten has killed them. There were members of his gang in other parts of the city. His gigantic organization went to pieces after his death, for lack of a leader, but the survivors were never uncovered. Some of them might be paying off old grudges."

"Then why did they wait so long to strike? It's been a year since we saw Kasten die. I tell you, the Lord of the Gelengi himself, alive or dead, has returned and is striking down these men for one reason or another. Perhaps they refuse to do his bidding once more. Five people were marked for death. Three have fallen."

"How do you know that?" said Bane.

"Look!" From beneath the cushions of the divan on which she sat she drew something, and rising, came and bent beside him while she unfolded it.

It was a square piece of parchment-like substance, black and glossy. On it were written five names, one below the other, in a bold flowing hand and in crimson, like spilled blood. Through the first three names a line had been drawn. They were the names of the three men who had died. The Dire Wolf scowled more than was usual for him. The last two names, as yet unmarred, were those of Rook and his own.

"Where did you get this?" he demanded with a new interest in his voice.

"It was slid under my door last night, while I slept. If all the doors and windows had not been doubly locked, the police would have found it pinned to my corpse this morning."

"I've heard of this Azfahan custom," Bane admitted grudgingly.

"It is the Dead Man List!" she cried. "The list of those about to die! I have seen it, when I was worked for him a year ago. It is a trick to strike mortal terror in his enemies. They see their names and they give up on living."

If Bane was impressed he failed to show it. "That stuff only works if you believe it wholeheartedly and not always then. Like Voodoo."

"No, it's an Alchemical curse. This is for our benefit. And I know we are hopelessly doomed. Kasten never warned his victims unless he was sure of killing them."

"Still might be one of his subordinates pulling a forgery," said the Dire Wolf , but with less conviction.

"No! No man could imitate that spidery hand. He wrote those names himself. He has come back from the dead!" Normally so glib and self-assured, Rook was losing some of her poise in her agitation. She ground out the half-consumed cigarette and broke the cover of a fresh carton. She drew forth a fresh cig and tossed the package on the table. Bane took it up and absently inspected it, not recognizing the brand.

"Our names are on the Doom List! It is a sentence of death from which there is no appeal!" She struck a match and was lifting it, when Bane's lightning swat struck the cigarette from her hand. She fell back on the divan, bewildered at the violence of his action, as he caught up the package and began gingerly to remove the contents.

"Where'd you get these things?" he demanded.

"Why, down at the corner drug store yesterday, I guess," she stammered. "That's where I usually—"

"Then they were tampered with after you bought them," he said. "These have been specially treated. I don't know what it is, but I've seen one puff of the stuff knock a man dead. Some kind of a esoteric Alchemical drug mixed with the tobacco. Were you out of your apartment while you were phoning me?"

"I was afraid my phone was tapped," she answered. "I went to a public booth in the same drug store."

"And it's my guess somebody entered your apartment while you were gone and tampered with the cigarettes. There! Look closely. You can barely see them but there are pin point holes all over the bottom of the package. Someone injected the serum."

Rook had dropped her usual self-assured mocking attitude. It was shocking to see someone so confident fall into terror. "How... How did you know?"

"I only got a faint whiff of the stuff when you started to light that cigarette. It's unmistakable. Smell it yourself. Don't be afraid. It's deadly only when ignited."

She obeyed, and turned pale. "Don't turn me down, Jeremy. Help me. Temur Kasten intends to kill me!"

The Dire Wolf's voice was colder than ever. "He'll have to get through me first."

II.

Rook had always been so confident, even when dealing with crimelords. It was unsettling to hear her voice sound fearful. "I told you! We were the direct cause of his overthrow! If you hadn't smelt that drug, we'd both be dead now, as he intended!"

"Well," he admitted, "it's a cinch somebody's after you, anyway. I still doubt it can be Temur Kasten, but there's no reason he couldn't have left a son or disciple with his secrets. But you've got to be protected until I run down whoever is being so free with his poisoned cigarettes."

"What about yourself? Your name's on his list, too."

"Don't worry about me," Bane dismissed the thought. "This wing's practically isolated from the rest of the building," he said, "and you've got the third floor to yourself?"

"Not only the third floor of the wing," she answered. "There's no one else on the third floor anywhere in the building at present. The economy, you know. These apartments aren't exactly flourishing right now."

The Dire Wolf had begun pacing, hands clasped behind him. "Rook, we already know the Gelengi can get in here without trouble. They may have left other poisoned traps for you. In the food, maybe. Don't touch anything. You'd better move to a random hotel."

"That wouldn't make any difference," she answered, trembling. Her nerves obviously were reaching their limit. "Kasten would find me, anywhere. In a hotel, with people coming and going all the time, and the simple locks they have on the doors, with transoms and fire escapes and everything, it would just be that much easier for him."

"Then, I'll call my police liaison and get up a couple of cops stationed around here."

"That wouldn't do any good, either. Kasten has killed again and again in spite of the police. They do not understand Alchemy."

"That's all too true," he muttered uncomfortably aware of a conviction that to summon men from headquarters would surely be signing those men's death warrants, without accomplishing anything else. It was absurd to suppose that the dead Gelengi fiend was behind these murderous attacks, and yet....

"Stay with me!" Rook's eyes were desperate, and she caught Bane's arm with hands that shook violently. "We can defend these rooms! While one sleeps the other can watch! Don't call the police, their blunders would doom us. You have worked in the Midnight War for years, and you alone are worth more than the whole police force."

"But I can't stay here," he scowled. "We can't barricade ourselves and wait for them to starve us out. I've got to hit back and find out who's behind all this. My KDF is split up in other realms right now, Okali and Chujir, so I can't call any of them for back-up either.

"There is one man in the city besides yourself I could trust," she said suddenly. "One fighter worth more than all the police. With him guarding me I could sleep safely."

"Yeah? And who would that be?"

"You know him. Shiro Mitsuru."

The Dire Wolf perked up at the name. "He's good all right. We've met a few times. I thought he had joined Andrew Steel's squad."

"No, I ran into him up by Central Park. He's at liberty for this week. We've known each other a year or two and he's my friend. He'd fight for me."

"I hope you're not manipulating him for some planned heist," said Bane with a searching glance which she did not seek to evade. "You do have a puppet master way of operating."

Rook looked away. "It's the game my kind play, Jeremy. But I've been straight with Shiro, he's as blunt as a battering ram. I know where he can be reached."

"Alright. Call him and tell him to hurry up here. You both speak Japanese. Even if your phone is tapped, Kasten won't understand what you're saying. I'll go downstairs and use the booth in the lobby. Lock the door, and don't open it to anybody until I get back."

When the bolts clicked behind him, Bane turned down the corridor toward the stairs. The old apartment house boasted no elevator. He watched all sides warily as he went. A peculiarity of architecture had, indeed, practically isolated that wing. The wall opposite Rook's doors was blank. The only way to reach the other suites on that floor was to descend the stair and ascend another on the other side of the building.

As he reached the stair he swore softly; his heel had crunched something tiny on the first step. With immediate suspicion of a planted poison trap he stooped and gingerly investigated but found only a small bit of glass. He could neither smell nor see any liquid. Reluctantly, he dismissed the incident. He descended the twisting stair without further delay and was presently in the booth in the office which opened on the street; a sleepy clerk dozed behind the desk.

Bane made a call but not to the police. There sounded at the other end of the wire a squeaky whine, "Yeah, hello?"

"Listen, Tommy," said Bane with his customary abruptness, "you told me you thought you had a lead on the Kossova murder. What about it?"

"It wasn't no lie, boss!" The voice at the other end trembled with excitement. "I got a tip, and it's big! Big! I can't spill it over the phone, and I don't dare stir out. But if you'll meet me at Big Stanislaus', I'll give you the dope. It'll knock you loose from your props, believe me it will!"

"I'll be there in an hour," promised the Dire Wolf. He left the booth and glanced briefly out into the street. He could have made an untraceable call using the Trom device called a Link but he had wanted any possible listener to know where he was going. Setting up a trap for himself seemed suicidal, but Bane had learned that it brought lurking enemies out into the open.

He went to the front of the lobby and gazed outside. It was a warm misty night. Traffic was only a dim echo from some distant, busier section. Drifting fog dimmed the street lamps, shrouding the forms of occasional passers-by. Bane felt anything could happen. Rook was right. The Midnight War was flaring up again.


III.

Bane hurried up the stairs again. They wound up out of the office and up into the third story wing without opening upon the second floor at all. The architecture, like much of it in or near the older parts of Manhattan, was eccentric. So many buildings had been modified repeatedly rather than being torn down and replaced. His feet made no sound on the thickly carpeted stairs, though a slight crunching at the top step reminded him of the broken glass again momentarily. Bane stopped once again to examine the spot but couldn't find anything suspicious. The carpet had not been cleaned in so long that it held many bits of debris.

He knocked at the locked door, answered Rook's tense challenge and was admitted. He found her more self-possessed, more like the confident former model and master jewel thief who gotten Europe in an uproar.

"I talked with Shiro. He's on his way here now. I warned him that the phone might be tapped and that our enemies might know as soon as I called him. He only laughed and said, let them try to stop him on his way here."

"That's Shiro all right," admitted the Dire Wolf. "While we're waiting for him I'd better have a look at your suite."

There were four rooms, drawing room in front, with a large bedroom behind it, and behind that a smaller furnished room and the bathroom.. The corridor ran parallel with the suite, and the drawing room, large bedroom and bathroom opened upon it. That made three doors to consider. The drawing room had one big east window, overlooking the street, and one on the south. The big bedroom had one south window, and the spare room one south and one west window. The bathroom had only one window, a small one in the west wall, overlooking a small court bounded by a tangle of alleys and board-fenced backyards.

"Three outside doors and six windows to be watched, and this the top story," muttered the Dire Wolf. "I still think I should get some cops here." But he spoke without conviction. He was investigating the bathroom when Rook called him cautiously from the drawing room, telling him that she thought she had heard a faint scratching outside the door.

From behind his left hip, he drew the long-barreled Smith & Wesson 38 that had never let him down. He opened the drawing room door and peered out into the corridor. It was empty. Nothing unexpected in sight. Bane closed the door, gave reassurances to Rook, and completed his inspection, grunting approval.

Rook had not been in the game for more than a few years but she was already a veteran of the badlands between criminal life and the Midnight War. The windows were held shut by hard rubber wedges she had jammed into place. The doors had deadbolts. There was no trapdoor, dumb waiter nor skylight anywhere in the suite.

In the spare room, he found a cardboard box filled with canned food, as well as a dozen gallon jugs of water. "Looks like you're ready for a siege," he commented.

"I'm taking this seriously. With Shiro to protect me, I could hold this fort indefinitely. If things get too hot for you, you'd better come back here yourself. It's safe unless they burn the house down."

A soft rap on the door brought them both around.

"Who is it?" called Rook in a voice which had regained its assurance.

"Soreha watashi da, Shiro," came the answer in a low-pitched, but strong and resonant voice. Rook sighed with relief and unlocked the door. A tall figure bowed and entered.

Shiro was tall for an Asian, the same six feet as Bane and though he lacked the Dire Wolf's gaunt leanness, his shoulders were equally broad, and his garments could not conceal the hard lines of his limbs. The Tiger Fury was wearing baggy black pants, a plain white T-shirt with an open denim vest and soft slippers.

In any costume it would have been evident that there was something wild and untamable about the man. The dark eyes were bright behind the single eyelid fold, and he moved with the ease of great strength under perfect control. Bane felt much the same reaction he would have felt if a real tiger had padded into the room.

"I thought you'd left the country," he said.

The Tiger Fury smiled, a flash of white in a bronzed face. "Not yet. The man in grey is finishing an investigation into some strange disappearances. Then we are supposed to fly to Brazil in a few days."

"Well, it's good to have a fellow Tel Shai knight on hand."

The Tiger Fury lifted one hand toward Rook in an informal salute. "Hello again. Don't look so worried. Right now you have the two most dangerous men alive at your side."

In fact, both men had discovered they had more in common than they had realized at first meeting a few years earlier. Jeremy Bane had grown up an orphan of the streets with no family or guardians, while Toshiro Mitsuru had been raised by parents on the run from the White Web. They had both been fighting to survive since childhood. And both were students of Kumundu under Teacher Chael of Tel Shai.

"All right, Shiro. Do you know anything about these murders?"

"Just what's in the papers. Our lovely friend here called me and I came from rooftop to rooftop in case of an ambush. I didn't see anyone. Oh, but wait... here is a little surprise I found outside the door."

He opened his hand and exhibited a white silk handkerchief. On it lay a crushed insect that Bane did not recognize. But Rook recoiled with a low cry.


"A red scorpion of Azfahan!"

"You bet," Shiro replied. "Their sting means death in a minute, maybe less. I saw it running up and down in front of the door, trying to get in. Another man might have stepped upon it without seeing it, but I was on my guard, for I smelled the Red Flower of Death as I came up the stairs. I saw the thing at the door and crushed it with a flower pot before it could sting me."

"What do you mean by the Red Flower of Death?" demanded Bane.

"It grows in the deserts where these vermin abide. Its scent attracts them as wine draws a drunkard. A trail of the juice had somehow been laid to this door. Had the door been opened before I killed it, it would have darted in and struck whoever happened to be in its way."

Bane's eyebrows lowered as he remembered the faint scratching noise Rook had heard outside the door.

"It's my fault!" he admitted. "They put a tiny flat vial of that juice on the stairs. I did step on it, broke it, and got the liquid on my shoe. Then I tracked down the stairs, leaving the scent wherever I stepped. I came back upstairs, stepped in the stuff again and tracked it on through the door. Then somebody downstairs turned that scorpion loose! That means they've been in this house since I was downstairs. They could be hiding somewhere here now! But somebody had to come into the office to put the scorpion on the trail. Wait here, I'll ask the clerk at the front desk."

"He sleeps like one who works two full-time jobs," said Shiro. "He did not wake when I entered. Burglars would love him. But what does it matter if the house is full of assassins? You and I are both here!"

"Unfortunately," admitted Bane. "I've got to start questioning sources. I'm not happy walking out and leaving you two to fight these killers alone. But there'll be no safety for us until we've smashed this gang at its root, and that's what I'm determined to do."

"They'll kill you as you leave the building," said Rook with conviction.

"They can try," he snapped. "I'll come back here some time before dawn. But I'm hoping the tip I expect to get will enable me to hit straight at whoever's after us."

He went down the hallway with an eerie feeling of being watched and scanned the stairs as if he expected to see it swarming with red scorpions, and he shied wide of the broken glass on the step. He had an uncomfortable guilt of leaving Rook in danger, in spite of knowing how capable Shiro was.

The clerk still sagged behind his desk. Bane shook him without avail. The man was not asleep but drunk. Two empty gin bottles under the counter matched the smell on the man's breath. But his heartbeat was regular and his breathing clear, so the Dire Wolf believed he was in no danger. Anyway, there was had no more time to waste. If he kept Tommy Ciro waiting too long, the fellow might become panicky and bolt, to hide in some rat-run where he couldn't be found.

The Dire Wolf stalked the streets as he had done all his life, moving on concrete battlegrounds beneath widely spaced streetlamps. He half expected a knife to be thrown at him, or to find a cobra coiled on the hood of his Mustang. On the driver's visor, four green and blue lights blinked steadily, the Trom security sensors installed by Megan Salenger. Satisfying himself at last, he climbed in and the mysterious woman watching him through the slits of a third-story shutter sighed relievedly to see him roar away unmolested. Rook was not as hard-boiled as she pretended. She was not a completely lost soul.

Shiro had gone through the rooms examining the locks, and having extinguished the lights in the other chambers he returned to the drawing room, where he turned out all lights there except one small desk lamp. It shed a pool of light in the center of the room, leaving the rest in shadowy vagueness.

"Darkness baffles rogues as well as honest men," he said blithely, "and I see like a cat in the dark."

He sat cross-legged near the door that let into the bedroom, which he left partly open. He merged with the shadows so that all of him Rook could make out with any distinctness was his the glimmer of his eyes as he turned his head.

"We will remain in this room, Rook," he said. "Having failed with poison and arachnid, it is certain that men will next be sent. Lie down on that divan and sleep, if you can. I will keep watch."

"Thank you for coming, Shiro. I'm not at my best right now, I wouldn't make good company."

"There will be happier times for all of us," he replied lightly.

Rook went to lie down, but she did not sleep. Her nerves seemed painfully taut. The silence of the house oppressed her, and the few noises of the street made her start.

Shiro sat motionless as a statue, imbued with the patience and immobility of all his training. His parents had taken him as a newborn to escape killers of the White Web from whom they had looted the treasury. Most of that fortune had been spent teaching young Shiro every martial art and fighting secret possible, His senses were at the upper limits of Human sharpness. Shiro could still smell the faint aroma of the Red Flower of Death, mingled with the acrid odor of the crushed scorpion. He heard and identified every sound in or outside the house. He knew which were natural, and which were not.

He heard the sounds on the roof long before his warning hiss brought Rook upright on the divan. Rook looked over at him inquiringly. Her untrained senses heard nothing. But he followed the sounds accurately and located the place where they halted. Rook caught something then, a faint scratching somewhere in the building, but she did not identify it, as Shiro did, as the forcing of the shutters on the bathroom window.

With a quick reassuring gesture to her, Shiro rose and melted like a slinking cat into the darkness of the bedroom. She took up a blunt-nosed automatic from under a pillow on the divan, with no great conviction of reliance upon it. Rook groped on the table for a bottle of wine, feeling an intense need of stimulants. She was shaking in every limb and felt cold. She remembered the cigarettes, but the unbroken seal on the bottle reassured her. Even the wisest have their thoughtless moments. It was not until she had begun to drink that the faintest sour flavor made her realize that the man who had injected the cigarettes with poison might just as easily have done the same to the bottle of wine. Gagging, she fell back on the divan and struggled for breath.

Shiro had wasted no time, because he heard other sounds out in the hall. As he crouched by the bathroom door, he knew that the shutters had been forced almost in silence, a job that an untrained man would have made sound like an explosion in an iron foundry. Now the window was being jimmied. He heard something stealthy and bulky drop into the room. Then it was that he threw open the door and charged in with deadly fists tight.

IV.

Enough light filtered into the room from outside to reveal a powerful, crouching figure with snarling features. The intruder yelped explosively as four stiffened fingers close together drove into his chest to burst his heart open.

Shiro seldom hesitated, his body acted out his mind's decisions with instantaneous response. He knew there was only one man in the room, but through the open window he saw a thick rope dangling from above. The Tiger Fury sprang forward, grasped that rope with both hands and heaved backward. The men on the roof released it to keep from being jerked headlong over the edge, and Shiro stumbled backward a step, sprawling over the corpse, the loose rope in his hands. Grinning in triumph, Shiro glided to the door that opened into the corridor. Unless they had another rope, which was unlikely, the men on the roof were temporarily out of the fight.

Shiro flung open the door and ducked deeply in the same motion. A hatchet hacked a great chip out the jamb where the Tiger Fury's head would have been and he jabbed upward once with a punch that cracked apart the man's sternum, then sprang over the writhing body into the corridor. As he vaulted over the dying man, Shiro's hand flashed down to snatch a big .44 revolver from its place in the killer's waistband. He didn't care for guns but against these odds, he thought it best to be practical.

The bright light of the corridor did not blind him. There was a second Gelengi crouching by the bedroom door, and another working at the lock of the drawing room door. Shiro was between them and the stairs. As they whirled around at his entrance, he casually shot the assassin in the belly. In the same instant, a small automatic spat flame from the hand of the second man, and Shiro felt the wind of the bullet zip past his ear. His own gun roared again and the Azfahani staggered, pistol flying from a hand that was suddenly a shattered red pulp. The man whipped a long knife from his robes with his left hand and lurched along the corridor toward his enemy.

Shiro shot him directly through the forehead and the Gelengi fell so near his feet that the long knife stuck into the floor and quivered a bare inch from the Tiger Fury's slipper.

But Shiro paused only long enough to snap the neck of the man he had shot in the belly, which he considered a sort of mercy, then turned and ran back into the bathroom. He fired a shot through the window just in case, though the men on the roof were making further demonstration, and then flung the pistol angrily away. It was annoying him. Guns made fighting too easy, he was a Tiger Fury and not some Wild West cowboy. Back in the bedroom he raced, snapping on lights as he went.

"I've cleared away some of the riff-raff!" he exclaimed to Rook. "They don't know what's worse, my fists or some bullets. There are others on the roof but we can ignore them for the moment. But cops will come to investigate the shot, so we had been decide what lies we're going to tell."

Rook stood bolt upright, clutching the back of the divan. Her face had paled to the color of marble, and the expression was rigid too, like a mask of horror carved in stone.

"Don't tell me you of all people are giving in to nerves!" Shiro scoffed. He moved toward her, to be met by a scream that sent him cowering back with an extremely puzzled expression.

"Keep back!" she cried in a voice he did not recognize. "You demon! You are all demons!" Foam flecked her lips as she screamed a long quavering cry that made Shiro wince at the madness of it.

"Rook, get a hold of yourself!" he begged. "It's me! I'm Shiro, you know me..." His outstretched hand touched her, and with an awful shriek she turned and darted for the door. He sprang to stop her, but in her frenzy she was even quicker than he. Rook whipped the door open, eluded his grasping hand and flew down the corridor, The Tiger Fury hesitated for once, stunned at her behavior. He called after her but she was deaf to his yell. By the time he started in pursuit, she was on the street and lost from sight.

V.

"Those Who Remember"

11/2/- 11/3/1986

[REVISION: The origin of Simon Cohen has been completely changed and all mentions of it have to be rewritten. He actually was an aging Kabbalist and disgraced Rabbi who with Alchemist Lee Hutchins' help, permanently placed his consciousness into a stone Golem of their making. He became his own Targhul.]

I.


Even before the door had slammed fully open, the Dire Wolf was in the smoky room and attacking. The nearest thug opened his mouth but didn't get a chance to yell. Bane threw a left backfist that spun the man completely around and dropped him to his knees. A second thug rushed right into a side kick to the stomach that doubled him up and made him retch. On the other side of the dingy room, one of the goons snapped off a shot but it got nowhere near its fast-moving target. The Dire Wolf swerved and lunged, closing fifteen feet in a split-second. Left forefist to the jaw, then a right sidefist to the chest connected almost at the same time. The guard crashed back against the wall behind him so hard that a framed picture fell to the floor.
.
That left only one thug still on his feet in that room. His expression was complete dismay and fear. A few seconds ago, he had been arguing listlessly with the other hired help about sending one of them out for sub sandwiches and beer, and now his three pals were on the floor. Standing in front of him was a gaunt man just six feet tall, dressed all in black, with cold grey eyes stabbing out at him from a narrow feral face. The gunman knew who this had to be.

"Forget about going for your gun," Bane said quietly. "Keep your hands where I can see them. Good." Behind the Dire Wolf, the thug who had only taken a backfist groggily managed to get to his feet, one hand reaching into his waistband where the butt of a .38 showed. Without showing how he knew the man was up again, Bane whirled on his right heel, whipping his left leg around in a reverse roundhouse kick that cracked his heel to the goon's jaw. This time, that man would stay down.

As though nothing had interrupted him, Bane returned his full attention to the gunman in front of him. "Let's get this over with," he said in a calm voice that did not need to threaten. "You and your boys here have just re-entered the country. We know you were bringing supplies to Cohen, we found the van you abandoned. The question now is, where is he? Where is the Stone Man?"

"I can't tell you that! He'd break me in half."

"No, I am the one you should be afraid of. Cohen won't be in any shape to hurt you. Where is he?"

As the man hesitated, he suddenly felt a sharp stinging pain on the end of his nose. Somehow, a silver-bladed throwing dagger had appeared in Bane's hand and nicked him. The Wolf held the knife so the light reflected off it. The thug gasped and abruptly there was an identical pain in the lobe of one ear, and he still had not seen Bane move.

"Where is he?" repeated Bane in the same even tone of voice.

The gunman's nerve broke. "Are you sure you can stop him?"

"I know I can. Where?"

"Up in Canada. Toronto. 1138 Chichester Road. But... it's like a nightmare. He has a death squad of things that aren't human. And he's a monster himself! He ain't flesh and blood- he's made outta STONE!"

Bane smiled tautly. "I know he is. We've met. The cops will be here in a few minutes. Long before you and your buddies go to trial, Simon Cohen will be destroyed. That's a promise." The Dire Wolf's Kumundu training had long ago reached the point where he could strike from any position without giving any warning. Faster than a real wolf, he lunged in and his stiff open hand cracked down like an axe blade to the side of the man's neck. As the gunman dropped to the floor, Bane swung to survey the situation. This was the supervisor's office of a construction company in Jersey City, drab and sparse with a desk, some chairs, two filing cabinets and a bathroom in one corner. The four men sprawled where they had fallen. His best judgement estimated they would be unconscious for a few more minutes and not able to get up and walk around for maybe twenty minutes after that. Since the police were already on their way, Bane felt a certain satisfaction in getting here first and getting the information he needed. His informants had been reliable so far.

He was being watched. In an instant, Bane snapped to full alertness and whirled around, the dart gun appearing in his left hand. There in the doorway loomed a manlike figure that filled the opening. Wide batlike wings were folded, but even so it was obviously a Kulan. The beast from Fanedral had red leathery hide, talons and claws and a head like a hound with upright ears and lambent yellow eyes. Bane held the dart gun on the demon, even though he knew the anesthetic darts would not pierce that tough hide. "What do YOU want?" he demanded.

To the Dire Wolf's utter surprise, the Kulan answered. "Justice," it said and laughed wildly before leaping out of sight. Bane rushed to the doorway and looked up just in time to see the demon speed away over the rooftops, wings beating and tail whipping from side to side. He holstered his weapon and stared as the Kulan was gone in the distance. Seeing a beast from Fanedral here, following him, could only mean that Simon Cohen was aware he was being hunted. Cohen was known to command a small army of creatures from adjacent realms. He must have had this demon tracking Bane all the while. There was no time to lose.

Jumping down the metal stairs to the gravel, Bane got in his car and fired it up, pulling out of the construction yard and out onto the highway. Before he had gone more than a mile, two New Jersey State Police cars sped past him toward the construction site. That was close. Maybe the thugs would tell the cops who had thrashed them but he doubted it and he certainly wasn't going to volunteer the information. Bane raced toward the George Washington Bridge just below the speed at which he would get pulled over. It was just getting dark.

( the rest of the story )

"Project Regulus II- Everybody Loves a Clone"

7/29/-7/30/1989

I.

Just before seven-thirty that evening, Jeremy Bane walked into the conference room at the KDF headquarters and saw his team was assembled and ready. The long oak table which took up much of that room had a dozen swivel chairs arranged along its length, five on each side and one at each end. He looked over the members available for this case. Cindy. Steve. Shiro. Len. Khang. A good assortment of powers and skills. Bane entered the room and said, "Hello, everyone, glad to see you're all on duty. Let me explain the situation."

Taking his place at the chairman's seat at the head of the table, the Dire Wolf continued, "I was contacted this morning by agents of Department 21 Black. That's the FBI section which handles crimes of a baffling or seemingly occult nature. They've gotten used to dumping these cases on us, but in an unofficial and off the books way. We're basically acting on our own responsibility with the authorities using us a freelance vigilantes."

Shiro Mitsuru made a disgusted noise. "Just once I would like the FBI or the NYPD or the Mandate to back us up! I don't expect praise but some appreciation would be nice." The Tiger Fury was wearing a plain white T-shirt with a sleeveless denim vest and the wiry muscles on his arms stood out vividly as he gestured. "We take all the risks doing their dirty work."

Bane allowed himself a faint sigh, rare for him. "I know. I feel the same, Shiro. But this is our duty as Tel Shai knights. We would be tracking down monsters and masterminds even if the authorities were actively trying to stop us. So. Two days ago, there was a massacre in New Jersey. Five men were murdered at the Stanmore Records Facility near Woodbridge. That's a place where the state keeps microfilm and paper documents. Some files were stolen, but nothing important. One guard, three record keepers and one janitor were all killed by two intruders."

"Well, that's odd," Steven Weaver said. The Black Angel had been on the top floor, helping Slade to do maintenance on the CORBY. He still had a oil-smeared tan jumpsuit on. Weaver was a black American with a thick mustache and an open, relaxed face. "I happen to know some military contractors keep records at Stanmore. Some realvaluable information on file there. Why assault the place and kill the staff but not take anything worth the risk?"

Jeremy Bane leaned forward. His pale grey eyes were always intense but now they seem especially bright. "My guess? It's a trick to lure us in. One of our enemies staged this so 21 Black would call us. Arem Kamende, Wu Lung, John Grim... hard to say which one."

"Sounds possible," Weaver admitted. "What else do we know?"

"The facility has a security tape they allowed 21 Black to copy, and I recorded it on my Link. The other camera was out of service at the time. Of course, I'm supposed to erase it within twenty-four hours. Here, let's get a look." Standing up, Bane went to turn off the overhead lights and clicked on a large video monitor built into one wall. The screen lit up and showed a logo RESTRICTED- CLASS A PERSONNEL ONLY, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, with a paragraph detailing the punishment that would befall any unauthorized people watching the tape.

They saw a warehouse, filmed from up by the ceiling. Rows of metal framework held cardboard boxes stacked neatly and labelled with prominents white numbers. A man in a white dress shirt and slacks was pushing a cart with two more boxes on it down between two rows of the shelving and he stopped to chat with an older man pushing a bucket with a mop in it. Both men gave a start and swung around at some noise. A thin dark-haired man in a black jumpsuit rushed at them so quickly his movements could barely be followed. He stabbed the janitor in the chest with a dagger, shoved him away, and then pounced on the other man. Faster than a big cat striking, the man in black swung the second victim around and slashed his throat open, then flung him aside and raced from the warehouse.

"Dang, that guy is nimble," Weaver said. "You think he's fast as you, captain?"

"Could be." Bane played the brief segment again. "Certainly faster than normal, even a Kumundu Master. There's an Alchemy drug called Velocitin, it accelerates a person but causes a lot of damaging side effects. The Mongoose team used it."

( the rest of the story )

6/13/1984

I.

For what seemed like ages, Bane struggled to fully regain consciousness. There was a fog of pain and confusion wrapped around him, holding him down. It was like trying to wake up from a deep slumber because an alarm clock would not stop ringing. Somehow he remembered his Kumundu training and began to breathe deeply in, hold it, then exhale more slowly. Again, drawing air in his lungs and clearing his head. Everything hurt. He became aware he was sitting up, but he could not move. Finally, one eye opened and then the other, blinking at the light.

He was in what looked like a rather ritzy hotel suite, with wine-colored carpeting and wood-panelled walls and modernistic furniture. A chrome sculpture of a rearing horse stood on a separate pillar of its own. Afternoon sunlight came in from French doors that opened to a balcony. He recognized the Chrysler Building in the skyline, so he was still in Manhattan. The Dire Wolf glanced down and saw he was strapped to a solid wooden chair that sat next to an identical chair. Leather straps held his wrists to the arms of the chair and his ankles to its legs, and there was a broader strap across his chest. Bane flexed and tugged, getting nowhere. There should be a way out of this. If he could start rocking and tilt the chair over... no, there didn't seem a chance it would break from the impact but if the straps loosened just a bit, maybe he could reach one of the gadgets hidden in his clothing. Always worth a try.

Then the door to the balcony opened and a huge man came through. Bane's pulse sped up and adrenalin surged through his blood. The man was seven inches over six feet in height, broad and muscular, dressed in a formal dark suit and tie with matching vest. His head was shaved, and pale hazel eyes under prominent brow ledges mocked Bane.

Karl Eldritch.

"I don't believe it," Bane said. "I was sure the world was rid of you."

( the rest of the story )

"Footprints In Red"

6/21-6/22/1988

I.

The last house had been left behind ten miles back and he had seen no man-made lights of any sort since then. Shiro Mitsuru rushed his bright red Mazda RX-7 along at a speed just a little too fast to be quite safe on the winding back roads. The moon was a thin crescent to his left, hanging over the gorgeous Blue Ridge Mountains with its subdued glow. He had never been in West Virginia before. The Tiger Fury smiled contentedly at the knowledge he was heading toward danger as quickly as he could. With all the windows down, the warm air swept up his face and ruffled his coarse black hair. Shiro's hazel eyes were almost gleeful.

At thirty, he was hitting his physical peak. A lifetime literally spent training under experts around the world had left him with zero body fat and incredible wiry definition in muscles shaped not by weight training but by movement. The Tiger Fury was wearing plain black canvas sneakers, slightly baggy denim jeans and a white T-shirt. An open black vest had two pockets on the left, but the throwing stars clipped to the inside were not apparent. He seldom carried more weapons than that, although a pair of nunchaku and a short staff were packed in the trunk of his car.

Shiro glanced at the clock on the dashboard. 11:59. The Midnight War was well named, he thought. He went up a steep winding hill, shifting gears smoothly, and emerged where he could see down the other side. There! In his headlights to the left, a long white form shimmered on the ground alongside the road. Shiro braked hard, swung his car over and yanked the parking brake. He had been expecting something like this. Either it would be a person flagging him down for help or something blocking the road, whatever it would take to make him stop. He leaped nimbly from the car and hurried over to the prone form.

It was a young woman with curly black hair, lying on her side and facing away from the road. As Shiro approached, he knew he was surrounded. An average person would not have heard the breathing or heard the faint creaking of the earth as men shifted their weight. Nor would they have smelled the odor of Westerners who ate too much beef and sugar, nor would they have caught the vaguest peripheral glimpse of motion which should have been behind his line of sight. But Shiro was no ordinary man.

"You're not fooling anyone," he said with the slightest trace of a British accent. He had spent his childhood on the run with his parents, but they had been in Hong Kong and London more than anywhere else. "Might as well get up off the cold ground."

The woman rolled over abruptly, sitting up with a Browning 9mm automatic in her hand. Her face was furious, apparently at the ruse being detected. "Freeze! Don't you dare move."

All around him, a dozen shadowy figures closed in on Shiro. The woman was the only one with a gun, the others held axe handles or butcher knives or softball bats. They were men of average size, wrapped in loose robes that rose to pointed hoods. In the backflash from the MG's headlights, their garments were a flat sullen black. He had heard of this new cult but had never seen Ebonites in person before.

"Good work, Melinda," said one man, voice muffled by the hood. "You can get dressed now, he ain't going no where with us here."

The Tiger Fury stood in a relaxed stance, open hands down by his side, apparently unconcerned about the situation. "So, I guess you think I'm in trouble?"

"A Jap!" said the leader. "Wasn't expecting that. Guess it don't make no never mind, though, the ritual will play the same." A cultist stepped forward to hand him a length of clothesline. "Hold out your hands, son, don't make it harder than it has to be."

"You guys crack me up," Shiro said with a barely repressed chuckle. Without any preliminary signals, without setting himself, he smacked his right foot hard to the side of the head of the man directly in front of him, then reversed that leg to whip it backwards without setting it down. His heel smashed in the hooded face of a cultist behind him. Both men were still falling when Shiro took a hopping step forward and drove out a straight side kick to the chest of the Ebonite, knocking him off his feet and tangling him up with still another cultist. He was moving so fast no one had reacted yet.

A full second had passed. Expecting the woman with the pistol to have recovered her wits by now, he whirled and dropped to crouch with his fingers and toes touching the ground. The heavy automatic exploded twice, its muzzle flash dazzling everyone in the gloom. Behind him, Shiro heard a man scream, hit by a bullet that passed overhead, but he was already rushing forward to yank the woman's arm out straight, dislocating her shoulder and wrestling the gun from her slack grip. The Tiger Fury tossed the automatic far away into the darkness. Guns detracted from the purity of combat.

Now the Ebonites had grasped the idea that somehow, unbelievably, the victim had been fighting back. Seven men in robes rushed in at Shiro from all directions, raising their weapons and ready to beat him to death. The piercing shriek of a real tiger rang out in the West Virginia night, echoing from the hills, a ferocious snarl that brought half the cultists to a stop in confused fear. None of them would have believed a Human throat could have produced that roar. In the instant that they hesitated, Shiro plowed into them in a bronzed blur of fists and fist. Bones broke wherever he struck, sternums cracked and necks snapped and he moved on. The Tiger Fury was working with a smoothness and speed that made it seem as if the Ebonites were allowing him to strike them down one after the other. Only two were left, one with a crowbar swinging wildly. Shiro swayed a mere inch, just enough to let the crowbar whistle past, and he chopped down the edge of his stiff open hand at the base of that man's neck.

The final man standing dropped his baseball bat and folded his arms defiantly. "Boy, I don't know what you got, karate or kung fu or whatever, but obviously I cain't fight you. Do what you want, I ain't gonna beg."

Shiro was not even breathing hard. "I need two of you to answer questions," he said, "And you seem to be the reasonable one." Closing the gap before the man could react, Shiro slammed a heel palm to the midchest that forced the air from the cultist's lungs with explosive force. The man fell to a seated position, unable to think of anything other than desperately catching his breath.

Around him, some of the men moaned and some stirred feebly. Shiro reviewed his techniques for the previous few minutes and was not entirely satisfied. He felt he should have set the Ebonite members up so they were closer together. Next time he faced multiple opponents, he must remember that getting them into position made everything more certain. Still, he had done all right. He went over to the woman, reset her arm with a lack of gentleness that made her pass out, and lifted her easily in his arms to bring her over to his car. He tossed her in the backseat of the Mazda, went to get the gasping man and threw him in as well. He took a second to yank off the black hood, revealing a pudgy balding face that glared at him belligerently.

Taking handcuffs and duct tape from the trunk, Shiro spent some time making sure the prisoners were secured and could not make any outcries. He tossed a light blanket over them and arranged it to cover them. "Let's not have any trouble from you two," he warned sternly. "Knocking you both out would not be a problem." With that, the Tiger Fury started up his car and pulled out onto the road. In a second, the red convertible was gone around a corner and the Ebonites were just beginning to regain consciousness.

( the rest of the story )

"Worse Than Mere Murder"

1/3-1/5/1989

I.

Bane had seldom been so disgusted with himself. Arms tied with wire behind his back, stripped naked, he was marched briskly down endless stone corridors lit by small torches in bronze sconces. Two Nekrosim walked in front of him, two behind him, curved swords in hand. The skull-faced men were bundled in loose brown robes of coarse material almost like burlap, cowled like monks, and they had sandals on their bony feet. They strode in silence, keeping enough of a distance that he could not lunge and seize a weapon from them.

Three hours ago, he had gotten a phone call from one of his many observers that a man with a face like a living skull had been seen on the Lower East Side, getting out of a taxi and entering a rundown apartment building on 21st Street. A Nekrosan in the world of Humans was always bad news. Bane had not waited for other KDF members to return from their various activities to go with him, he had simply set out to investigate on his own. And, looking back, impatience had once again been his weakness. Instead of a through reconaissance and staking out the building for observation long enough, he had simply entered through a basement window and started creeping through the building.

The blast of gralic energy which had flung him down a hallway to crash against the far wall with stunning force had taken him by surprise. Nekrosim had their warlocks but they were usually limited in ability. Obviously, he had run into an exception. Although he thought he had not completely lost consciousness, he was dazed and unable to resist as a dozen of the skull-faced men piled on him. His weapons and field suit were stripped away, and somehow they even knew how to unfasten the flexible Trom armor. As soon as he could stand, he was started on this march. Where the hell were they? No apartment building in Manhattan had miles of stone tunnels under it that he had ever heard of.

Naked, the Dire Wolf was a startling sight. At six feet even and a hundred and seventy pounds, he seemed to have zero body fat. His muscles were long and wiry, with high definition that make the striations stand out sharply as he moved. Under heavy black brows, his pale grey eyes flashed with rage he was not trying to hide at the moment.

The party passed through heavy oaken double doors and entered a high-ceiling room lit by chest-high bronze braziers filled with burning liquid. Rich draperies hung on the walls, there were polished ebony benches and tables lining those walls and a ten foot high statue in red metal of men in armor brandishing a spiked mace. Draldros, of course. The air was dry and warm and smelled of some acrid incense.

At the end of the room was a platform with seven wide steps leading up to a gilded throne carved so its back rose over its occupant much like a cobra hood. Seated bolt upright on that throne, alert and eager, was a Nekrosan in robes of finer material than what the others wore, dark burgundy shot through with golden threads. He held a short sceptre that ended in a round deep red crystal which gleamed with its own lambent light.

Like all the Nekrosim, the one on the throne had a face which looked uncannily like a skull covered with taut light skin. The nose was a mere snub, the toothy mouth unnaturally wide and the dark brown eyes glowered beneath a protruding brow ledge. None of the Nekrosim had any visible hair, but this one was unusual in that he wore a black skullcap of felt that gave a vague impression of normal hair. As he saw Bane, his hideous grin widened even more.

The party escorting Bane came to a halt and one of the Nekrosim lowered to his knees with head bowed. "Great Valesco, we have brought the prisoner directly to your presence as commanded."

Valesco gestured for the guard to rise. "You serve me well, Demozon. So! The Dire Wolf appears for once as he should. Humbled and helpless. Oh, you have much to answer for your crimes against my Race, Human fool."
As casually as if chatting in a diner, Bane said, "What's with all these tunnels? How did they get built under Manhattan?"

Still smiling, Valesco replied, "This stronghold of the Nekrosim is more than two hundred years old. None of your Race know of these tunnels. They started as smuggler routes and we have expanded them for generations. No Human has ever entered here and left alive."

"And you, Valesco is it? You're a sorcerer, right?"

The Nekrosan's smile slipped a bit. "You are not broken yet, Dire Wolf. I think it best that some of your famous arrogance be bled from you before you begin your series of deaths."

Despite his training, that one got past Bane's defenses. "Wait, SERIES of deaths?"

"Oh, yes." The skull-faced warlock raised the sceptre and tapped it against the hollow of his free hand. "Here in this stronghold of our Race, you will not be killed only once."

( the rest of the story )