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Post By Back with the honking huge chunks, the Hooded Hood perniciously presents yet another of sweet sad Sorceress' darkest hours Sat Apr 17, 2004 at 12:32:18 pm EDT |
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#148: Untold Tales of the Prince of Fibs: Race With the Devil | |
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#148: Untold Tales of the Prince of Fibs: Race With the Devil Don’t believe the fire and brimstone. That’s just for the tourists. And don’t believe in the horns and the tails and the pitchforks. They’re distractions, to keep your eye and your mind off the real evil. If you can picture it and fit it into your frame of reference and compare it to something you know, you haven’t seen the real Hell. Take Blackhurt, for example, a midnight-black razor-haired insect-eyed humanoid standing twelve feet high, with burning eyes and a laugh that sounds like cats being seared with a blowtorch. He calls himself a Lord of Hell, like his sire Mefrothto before him (before he backstabbed Mefrothto and helped humans kill him, and what sort of ultimate evil can truly die?). He reigns over a vast pain-filled demesne with tormented souls and tormenting monsters. And he’s pretty nasty. But you’re only seeing the mask, the glove puppet, the sanitised PR-friendly version as he sits on his throne of blood and listens to the howling of the damned (as if burning or torturing someone is the worst thing that can happen to them over eternity). Behind that mask? Well, pray you never know. But Lords of Hell (well, the ones who call themselves Lords of Hell, in the same way politicians claim to be running a country) are creatures of tradition, and if there’s one thing a Lord of Hell likes, it’s to claim a soul that wasn’t scheduled to be his. If there’s a system for soul-claiming nobody’s ever really written it down. Nobody knows what a soul is, or even if it is, yet you can sell yours on E-bay and get $5000 (really, that happened just recently, contract of blood and everything). Or, if you’re a witch of the Darkness family, an ages-long matriarchal line of magic-workers originally bred by a fiend called the Demon Lover to eventually spawn him into mortal flesh, you can get considerably more. Whitney Darkness was the witch who broke the curse on her family. With the help of her lover Jay Boaz she slew the Demon Lover (another dead demon, how careless). With the strength he gave her she threw off the conventions of her family and became a member of the Lair Legion, pretending that her insights and gifts made her a superhero. With Jay (but folks usually called him Hatman) Boaz she could do anything, and the world lay before her. Then she saw Jay die. He froze in battle (so unlike him) and he was vaporised by the villain, and he was gone. There was a memorial service and people said nothing but nice things about him (and they were all true), and then life went on as if it didn’t matter that he was gone and there was a void in the centre of the universe where he should have been. All those bright futures were reduced to a black present. So Whitney made her bargain, a pact with Blackhurt. She wanted the power to bring Jay back from the dead (and no mortal has that power, and few other beings). She wanted to save him. She knew it was wrong, was warned by the grandmother that had raised her that it was wrong; but Whitney did not listen to Hagatha Darkness. The woman who had raised her after her mother had fled from the Covenant curse was not able to save her from herself. The Sorceress took the power and she reached beyond the veil, and what came back was the same spirit as the one that had been snuffed in that terrible battle; but it was not the Jay she knew. Cruel and scheming, this Jay tried to use her, tried to hurt her. If it hadn’t been for a friend keeping an eye out for her she would have been destroyed. As it was, Joshua John Clement wrecked the resurrection spell and the summoned spirit was lost forever. And Whitney’s side of the deal? She wouldn’t barter her soul to the devil. She knew Jay wouldn’t want that, wouldn’t come back at that price. So she promised Blackhurt that at some time of his choosing in the future she would let him take over her flesh for twenty-four hours. The wording was diabolically precise: “In exchange for the power to perform this magic, you agree to give me your body, or rather ownership thereof, for twenty-four hours at some future time of my choosing; with the caveat that I shall do that body no permanent harm, nor harm others with it, but with the clear understanding that it will be mine to play with, no matter what disgusting things I might choose to have you do.” And Whitney had said “Yes.” It was a fool’s bargain, but in her grief and loneliness Whitney was a fool for love. She gave everything and received nothing and Blackhurt laughed at her loss. And now… Now the time had come to give the devil his due. “Well,” said Blackhurt, running Whitney’s hands over the curves of her body, “this is going to be a lot of fun.” The Sorceress wanted to scream, but now her voice belonged to someone else; to something else. “I’m letting you stay conscious, of course,” the Prince of Fibs told her. “You’ll be able to see and hear and feel everything you do while I’m driving. I wouldn’t want you to miss a moment of it.” Whitney wanted to plead. Blackhurt had chosen the exact moment she was supposed to draw her teammates out of the virtual reality machine they had entered to rescue Art, Randy, and Mindy of the LL support crew. Now dull thud and Cressida were trapped in there too, heading for destruction. The Sorceress could only watch in horror. “The programme? Well, in no particular order I expect to undertake a catalogue of erotic experiments with a range of humans, animals, and nether creatures, to tell some home truths to a number of your friends that should shatter their friendship forever, to have you commit a number of wicked crimes that will see you imprisoned for the rest of your life, to release a number of my minions that have been bound on Earth for centuries, to burn your grandmother’s house to the ground, and to test the limits of pain that this body can endure before passing out. And then perhaps a light lunch.” The nightmare was coming true, and Whitney could do nothing to stop it. “Oh, and when I’m finally finished with your soiled bleeding body at the end of our time together, I’ll be leaving you in the hands of some of your nastiest enemies. Count Armageddon in Badripoor, perhaps, as long as he promises you will live out a long and humiliating life of pain and degradation. Or Camellia of the Fey. Or maybe that Slimy Slaver Lovetoad who is so keen to find a position for you?” He chuckled in Whitney’s voice. “Whatever it is, I assure you it’ll seem a blessed relief after the next twenty-four hours.” “And then? Well that’s the best part, Whitney, my lamb, my piskie, my broken beauty. When the screaming nightmare that your life has become is so intolerable that you will do anything for the pain to end… then you will sell me your soul, freely and of your own will, and we can continue our fun and games for all eternity.” Blackhurt giggled again at his victim’s reaction. “Oh, don’t start screaming now. Pace yourself.” “Hey, Whitney, who are you talking to?” Blackhurt turned the Sorceress round so she could see the newcomer. De Brown Streak leaned in the doorway as if he wandered round Balefire’s floating castle all the time. “Josh,” Blackhurt had her say, “What are you doing here?” DBS shrugged. “I was looking for you,” he admitted. “Thought you might need…” “A little bit of comfort?” Whitney asked. Then she smiled seductively. “I like a man who’s persistent.” “Did you know there’s a man dressed as a kind of deer tied up in your Lairjet?” Josh Clement asked her. “And why are thuddy and the others strapped into those chairs with wires sticking in their heads?” “It’s a case,” Whitney explained. “I can’t talk about it. Anyway, we both know that’s not what you’re interested in. I know why you really came. I know what you came for.” “You do?” “You want me,” the Sorceress answered. “You’ve always wanted me.” And her hands strayed to the buttons of her bodice. “Actually no,” De Brown Streak replied. “I’m not interested at all.” Whitney pouted. “Playing hard to get, Josh? This is a one-time offer. Whatever you want.” “Sorry,” DBS shrugged. “You’re just not my type.” He folded his arms. “Whitney Darkness, now she’s my type. Style, charm, sass and class, the whole nine yards. But Blackhurt you nasty sonovabitch, you just ain’t her.” The Prince of Fibs hissed and took the time to plunge into Josh Clement’s mind. It was easy to sift through the desires and lusts there, yet there was a bright core of nobility and heroism that he found hard to look at too closely. But it was clear how DBS had come to be here just at the moment Blackhurt had possessed Sorceress. “Xander the Improbable,” said the demon. “Yes,” agreed the master of the mystic crafts, stepping out from the doorway behind DBS. “So you were serious about that bargain,” grinned Blackhurt. Whitney’s lips looked a lot less attractive when he smiled with them. “You’d risk everything to save your daughter?” “Double or nothing,” suggested the Parodyverse’s sorcerer supreme. “You lose the contest then Whitney goes free and clear, her obligation removed. You win and you get me as well as her.” “Your soul?” the Demon Lord hissed. “After all, this is a buyer’s market.” “Yes,” agreed Xander. “If you win our agreed contest by the agreed rules then you can have my soul.” “And the trial? Will you seek to match your non-existent magics with a Lord of Hell, little mage?” Xander glanced at De Brown Streak. “I was thinking about a race.” De Brown Streak ran. He unleashed the mutate gift that allowed him to accelerate to fantastic speeds, lowered his head, and pelted as fast as he could. At first his powers allowed him to handle the fatigue poisons and exhaustion, to slide forward with boundless energy in a different fold of time to the rest of the world. But this was the hardest run he’d ever attempted, and the resistance was terrible. He wished he could remember how he got to where he got, or where he was now in this grey cloudy place, or what he was supposed to do here. But he couldn’t, so he just kept on running. As if the devil was on his heels. Josh’s heart was pounding ready to burst and his lungs were burning when the broke out of the mist and found himself in a blind alley. There was nowhere else to run. But there was a whimper. Josh looked up, keeping his hands supported on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. There were two men at the passage’s dead end, and they had corned a girl. “Hey, let her go!” Josh called out, and blurred forward to stop the attackers. His hand passed straight through the bigger man’s shoulder, and nobody seemed to see him. “Stay back Eric, I mean it,” the girl said in a quavery voice. She wore in a grubby mini-dress and a sixties headband. Her long blonde hair was tangled and dirty. There was blood on her lip where she’d been punched. “I’m not coming back with you this time.” De Brown Streak looked at the young woman in shock. “Whitney? Whit, is that you?” “Like you have a choice,” said the smaller man, who wore a sharp leather jacket and faded flared jeans. “Don’t make me have Truck slap you again.” Truck balled his hand into a fist around a roll of dimes. He liked the slapping part. De Brown Streak tried to shift the vibrations of his body to bring him into phase with the events around him. He failed. “If you try to take me… I’ll hurt you,” the girl that looked so much like Whitney Darkness warned her assailants. “I won’t go back.” “You’ll hurt us?” sneered Eric. “I think I should carve up your face just for thinking about it, bitch!” “Fight back!” DBS shouted, although nobody could hear him. “Don’t give in to these bastards! Just fight them.” The girl shrank against the wall as they moved in on her. One slender hand came up in a curious gesture, and for a moment the alley seemed to get colder and darker. “No” she said in a voice unlike her previous frightened squeaking. Truck halted for a moment, suddenly nervous. Then it was over. “I can’t,” the girl whimpered, closing her eyes and dropping her hand. “He’ll find me.” As she crumpled the alley returned to its dismal normalcy. Josh was certain of one thing. Whitney or whoever it was had just been about to do magic, and had stopped because there was something about it that frightened her more than the two men who were about to beat the living daylights out of her. He was so preoccupied that he didn’t even notice the newcomer in the alley. Neither did Eric and Truck until Eric lurched and screeched as the stranger dropped something down the neck of the pimp’s jacket. “Aaagh!” Eric shrieked. Truck turned round and a twelve-pound ornamental candlestick hit him in the face. He went down in a welter of blood and broken dentalwork, his head bouncing off the wall as he fell. Eric looked up from shaking loose his jacket, in time to meet the candlestick coming back the other way. “Nice,” admired De Brown Streak. “Nice candlework, buddy.” But the newcomer ignored him like the rest and turned to check on the girl. “Are you alright?” he asked solicitously. “Did they hurt you?” The girl gave a half-sob half-laugh. “Which time?” she snorted. “I’ve run away before. They always find me.” That thought seemed to sober her, and she shuddered. “Don’t go,” the young man who had rescued her begged her. “If you run off they’ll only find you again – after receiving a certain degree of dental repair. Or somebody like them will. It’s not safe to be a runaway on these streets.” “I have to run. I have nowhere to go.” The young man was on his hands and knees rummaging in the garbage for something. “Come home with me,” he asked her. “Nothing improper. But I’d be happy to offer you a little help.” “A bath?” the girl asked. “With bubbles if required. And maybe something to eat?” “Oh, that would be…” Then the young woman’s face fell. “No, I can’t. Sorry. I’m trouble. I’m not safe to be with.” Her rescuer was still crawling at her feet, trailing out a piece of lettuce on the ground. “Sounds fascinating. Come anyway.” “You know what I am,” the girl told him, gesturing to her cheap clothes, and meaning that she worked the streets for Eric and Truck. “Actually, I do,” agreed the young man. “Ah! There you are!” And he reached down and picked up a small furry animal. At first the girl thought it was a rat, but it was too small and too clean. “I needed a distraction to keep one of them busy, so I dropped Harry down your adversary’s neck,” the stranger explained. “I can’t come home with you,” the girl told him. “I’m being hunted. I don’t mean by these guys. I fell in with them to hide from… the person who’s really after me.” “Fall in with me next then,” the young man grinned, brushing back a lock of hair and pushing his spectacles back onto his nose. “I’m Alexander Whittaker.” “Call me Vervain then,” replied Whitney Darkness’ mother. “And… take me with you.” “Take me with you!” mimicked Blackhurt, butting Whitney’s eyelashes in mockery of Vervain’s expression. “Oh, she was an accomplished whore, that one.” Xander, lying in a daze on one of the VR couches beside the fallen heroes, was unable to make a response. Blackhurt knew the mage could hear him though. “You overlooked a few elements of this wager, ‘master’ or the mystic crafts,” he whispered in his enemy’s ear. “I knew you were letting sentiment get the better of you when you approached me on Galactivac’s Hoover Ship. I mean, look at this.” The Prince of Fibs gestured round with Whitney’s hand. Alongside Xander’s supine form, De Brown Streak, dull thud, Art Corben, Mindy Pyrite, and Randy Robertson were also laid out helpless. “Rather careless to leave all these vulnerable people just lying about unprotected. Why, if anything happened to Joshua’s body here while he was astrally projecting our bet would be over just like that. He’d never be able to win that rather bizarre little race we agreed upon – if he died here and now.” Inside herself, Whitney was screaming that the bargain said that Blackhurt didn’t harm anybody with her body. “Yes, there was some provision of that kind, wasn’t there?” sneered the Demon Lord. “So instead I’ll go up to your Lairjet and wake Pudu Lad out of his entrancement. I’m sure I’d be able to… convince him to do something terrible to your friends instead.” Blackhurt ran a hand over Whitney’s curves. “I can be very tempting.” The Sorceress strained her will to reclaim herself but she was bound by pact law. Blackhurt laughed at her and took her towards the Lairjet. “Let the shames begin,” he announced. It was hard racing memory, chasing thoughts, but Josh Clement had to do it. He forced himself to push his boundaries, ignoring the pain to keep up with the dancing images. There was Vervain, outside a library, in an attic, taking a bath, eating a meal. And there was Whittaker, in the same attic, pulling volumes from shelves, studying a scroll, placing that candlestick with care back in its place on a carefully-drawn pentagram. And then the path ended again, and De Brown Streak tumbled to a halt across the magic circle. He wondered how he managed to roll across the floor but pass through the candlesticks. The crucible in the middle of the pentagram shattered into molten shards. “It wasn’t me, man!” Josh called guiltily. “Damn and blast!” hissed Whittaker, throwing down the scroll he had been chanting from. “Yes indeed,” said an older man who was watching closely. This man had tall Christopher Lee looks, with dark hair greying at the temples swept straight back from a thin, hook-nosed face. “That was one of my favourite crucibles.” “What went wrong?” Whittaker demanded. “I was certain I’d got the ritual right this time.” “You can’t see?” the older man wondered, staring straight at Josh. “Well, maybe when you’re more experienced.” “Hello?” DBS called to the tall man. “You can see me?” “I’m never going to become a master, am I?” Whittaker despaired. “Tell me straight, Lucius, am I?” “We all have a path to walk,” Lucius Faust, sorcerer supreme answered gnomically. “Or to run, in some cases. It’s just a matter of working out where the path is, and which forks we want to take.” He reached for his coat and pulled it on. “And why we’re trying to get there.” “You’re going?” Whittaker asked plaintively. “Yes. I have to check on the Rakshasa migration, and you have a house guest who’s waking up. Are you sure you know what you’re doing with that one?” “Yes,” insisted the young man. “Or no. She’s got power, I know that much. She could have fried those two hoodlums that were hurting her, but she didn’t dare. She’s being hunted.” “Set your wards well, then,” Faust replied. “And beware. That one’s tangling strands of destiny all over the place.” “Which one?” De Brown Streak called after him. “Me or her?” But Faust was gone. Vervain appeared from the cupboard-bedroom at the far end of the attic, an attractive sleepy girl in Whittaker’s quilted red dressing gown. Washed and fed, with her hair combed out into silken gold, she looked a different woman. “I heard voices,” she said. “A friend and colleague of mine. He’s just left.” Vervain looked around the apartment, and especially at the smeared chalk circle. “So,” she swallowed, “when do I hear the rest of it?” “The rest?” Whittaker asked. “What rest?” “The proposition,” the young woman told him. “The deal. What you want from me in exchange for looking after me.” She slanted her head defiantly. “I’m not stupid. I know nothing’s for nothing.” “Well, a cup of tea might be nice,” Whittaker suggested. “Two sugars please.” “Good one!” approved DBS invisibly. “Now you better be treating this lady nice, buster, ‘cause she’s been through a lot, okay?” “Stop playing games,” Vervain demanded. “I know there’s more to you than meets the eye. That Lesser Key of Solomon pentagram there, for example. That’s a binding ritual. Are you trying to do magic?” Whittaker looked up sharply. “You recognise the diagram? You’ve had occult training?” “No,” answered the girl bitterly. “I have not had any training. My mother didn’t approve of me using my… my mother didn’t like me knowing about the occult.” She snorted. “She said it would bring me to a bad end. Where as now things are so wonderful.” “But you know you’re talented? Magically. I saw you nearly fry those idiots that were chasing you.” “I know I can’t ever use my magics, even if I learned how. The… person that I’m hiding from would know if I used my gifts, and he might come looking for me.” She shuddered and turned away. “Mother thinks he’s all locked away forever, but I could still hear him at night, whispering, sniffing, snuffling behind the walls, looking for a way to get to me.” “So you ran away,” surmised Whittaker. “To the wicked city.” “To the wicked city,” Vervain agreed. “And the wicked city gobbled me up. By the way, I notice you’ve hidden my stash. Where is it?” “You’re off the drugs,” the young man told her. “They cloud your mind, and you have too sharp a mind to cloud.” The young woman frowned. “Who the hell do you think you are?” she demanded. “Good question,” agreed DBS. “Although you look kind of familiar.” He was convinced now that the girl wasn’t Whitney. The looks were similar but the body language was all wrong. Whitney had never been this timid and repressed. And her rescuer was… “I told you. I’m Alexander Whittaker,” the young man repeated. “And you’re a wannabe wizard,” surmised Vervain, looking at the piles of books and scrolls that littered the attic. There were things in jars and things in cages (not just Harry the hamster) and skulls and candles and all the paraphernalia of the occult. And there was a metal box filled with wrenches and pipe grips, and a half-dismantled grandfather clock. “You’re Xander the Improbable,” De Brown Streak realised. “Or you will be!” “Quick, isn’t he,” Blackhurt said scornfully. “I have to say, Whitney, you have a talent for attracting dumb self-sacrificing men to you. First your beloved – what was his name again? – ah well, doesn’t matter cause he’s buried now; first he stays behind to save you, and now Joshua. Quite a little talent you have there, my darling.” He felt Whitney raging within herself at his mention of Hatman. “Jay, is it? Yes, he’d have been a great hero, and lived a long and productive life if he’d never got entangled with you. But the Darkness women tend to use up their men, don’t they?” Blackhurt snorted as they reached the castle’s open courtyard where the Lairjet rested. “All those people spending all that time trying to impregnate you, and now you’re mine and we can get you impregnated as much as we like,” the demon noted. He paused and thought for a while. “Would you say that tattoos and piercings constitute permanent harm? I’m arguing they don’t, but you can lodge a complaint afterwards if you think I’m being unfair.” He listened to Whitney shrieking inside. “Tell it to the gentlemen whose keeping I’ll be leaving you in when our twenty-four hours is up. Of course, then there’ll be no compulsion not to offer you permanent harm, will there, so you might want to learn manners and obedience.” The Sorceress strained to overcome Blackhurt’s control, but she was a helpless passenger in her own body. When Josh and Xander had appeared she had dared hope for a moment that she might be saved, but then they had entered into that bizarre bargain about a race through Xander’s memories to reach a certain key moment and Blackhurt had worked them into his plots. Now she wasn’t only going to be hurt, humiliated, destroyed, but she was going to doom her father and friends too. “Good, isn’t it?” the Prince of Fibs smirked. Even her thoughts were not private from her possessor. “While Clement ploughs his way through the sorcerer supreme’s turgid recollections and Pudu Lad works off all those years of repression on our helpless heroes, you and I have an appointment with a little bar I enjoy in Hanoi. I hope you’re not scared of snakes.” He waited a moment for his victim’s internal reaction, then added. “You are? That’s a pity because…” Then he saw Pudu Lad laid out unconscious on the Lairjet’s floor with a swelling bruise on his chin. And then time stopped for Whitney Darkness. “Hmph,” growled Sir Mumphrey Wilton as he put away his temporal pocketwatch. “Loves the sound of his own voice, that bounder.” The Sorceress found her body frozen but her mind alert. “What? What’s this?” shrieked Blackhurt, but silently since he couldn’t move Whitney’s chronally-held flesh. “I’ve arranged for you to be able to still hear me, daughter,” Mumph explained to the Sorceress. “I’m using a little time-effect I know about to change the way your body relates to the rest of the continuum. No need to explain the details. Didn’t think it was a good idea to let that blaggard Blackhurt just saunter around doin’ what he likes. Not cricket.” “I can leave this form and rend you to pieces!” the Prince of Fibs howled. Mumphrey couldn’t hear him, but he anticipated the demon’s response. “Of course, Blackhurt could abandon your body and try it on with me. Could probably kill me too, but then he’d have voluntarily given up his possession of your flesh, Whitney, and your bargain would be done. Then you and young Xander and DBS and the others could mop the floor with him, what?” Sorceress considered a range of terrible things she could try on the Lord of Hell. Blackhurt was not impressed; but he was angry. “I’ll see you screaming in my pits for this, Wilton!” “Just makin’ sure it’s a fair race, don’t you know,” the eccentric Englishman noted *** The runs through Xander’s memory were getting harder, uphill sprints against some hellish hurricane over sinking sands that threatened to suck Josh Clement down and drown him. DBS broke through to his next stopping point half dead, sprawling on the floor to let his screaming muscles relax for a moment. “Ouch,” the mutate runner moaned as the leg cramps caught up with him. He seemed to have run a long way to stay in the same place. He was still in Whittaker’s loft, surrounded by the clutter of the would-be master of the mystic crafts, and the evidence of an interest in clockwork. But then he noticed that the roof-window was laced with snow, and soft flakes were quietly falling from a midnight sky. Some time had passed. Then he heard the sounds, unmistakable noises of two people giving each other pleasure. There was a violent creaking of old bed springs, mutual sounds of climax, then a comfortable silence. “Aw man, this is not something I should be invisibly hovering round,” complained De Brown Streak. But his curiosity forced him to peek into the little alcove where the mattress was laid out beneath the snowed-up casement. Whittaker and Vervain were there, wrapped together beneath a quilt, clearly lovers. Vervain had lit up a cigarette – unfiltered, Josh noted – while Xander smoked a pipe. They were coiled around each other like they would never come apart. “There now,” purred Vervain, “don’t I make a better familiar than that hamster of yours?” “I should point out that Harry is not expected to perform the duties you have just taken upon yourself,” Whittaker assured her. “Not would you be as easy to slip down the back of an enemy’s shirt.” Vervain giggled. “I just wanted to say thank you, that’s all. For being so kind to me. For everything.” “You were very thankful,” agreed Whittaker. “My spine may never recover. But maybe we can be thankful some more a little later on.” The young woman pushed her hair back from her face and examined her lover. “You’ve never asked who I am, Xander. Where I came from, or why I’m running.” “Xander? Nobody calls me Xander.” “Well I do. If you’re going to be a mage you shouldn’t use your true name anyway. Everyone knows that. You have to adopt a… a wizard name.” “Is that why you don’t tell me who you really are, Vervain? I haven’t asked because I didn’t think you were ready to tell me, and Lucius said I shouldn’t try and find out. He said it might be dangerous to know.” “Your master’s right, Xander,” admitted Vervain. “It is dangerous. There’s someone looking for me, even though he’s supposed to be… locked away. He’s looking and he won’t be satisfied until he’s found me, had me.” “You mean sexually?” “I mean in every way possible. Mind, body, soul. Consumed me. And he can. I was born to be his.” “I can protect you,” Xander assured her. “I’m learning. Slowly, I grant you, but soon I’ll be a master of the mystic crafts, not merely the apprentice to the sorcerer supreme. There’s little a true mage can’t do. We can study together, hone our skills…” Then one of the dull blue-glass bottles on a shelf in the corner of the flat shattered. De Brown Streak reacted with mutate-fast reflexes and was fast enough to see some dark shadow flit through the wall and vanish. Whittaker and Vervain moved in slow motion in comparison. “What was that?” the girl demanded in a panicky voice. “One of the spirit jars,” Xander frowned, dragging on his red dressing gown. “A ward against intrusion.” He looked around carefully. “Somebody is testing my defences.” De Brown Streak saw Vervain’s face as her lover spoke those words. There was terror there in those violet eyes, and a world of horror. He saw the dream shatter in her mind. There was no safe haven, no beloved, no hope. The Demon Lover had found Vervain Darkness. Hagatha Darkness rocked in her old chair with her black cat on her knee and knitted something that looked like a vest for a sea lamprey. Covenant House had no electric lighting, so the candle-lit room was filled with shadows. “I know you’re there,” the witch called sharply. “So stop the games and tell me what you want, Blackhurt.” “Very good,” the prince of Fibs applauded, melting from the darkness. “But then, I suppose you’ve had a lot of experience of demonic visitors in your time, old woman.” “Enough to know when it’s just a shadow that’s calling, Blackhurt,” Hagatha said sharply. “You’re not really here. I imagine you’re still stuck inside Whitney in Mumphrey’s time-stop.” “You told him how to find me,” Blackhurt reasoned. “How to set that instrument of his to catch me.” “I’ve spent over a century of my extended life raising daughter and granddaughter, demon. I don’t intend to have wasted my time.” Blackhurt, or the illusion of him, towered over the old woman. “Spent your life, yes,” he agreed. “When we first met you were as young and pretty as Whitney is now. Time has not been kind to you, Hagatha. Life has not been kind.” “I trust this has a point?” the witch said sharply. “Get on with your proposition. I’m just getting to the fiddly bit of this pattern and I don’t want to drop a stitch.” “Very well, hag. Whitney is as young and pretty as you were, and she’s your direct bloodline and a sorceress in her own right. Help me overcome Wilton’s time-trap and I’ll empower you to swap your soul and Whitney’s, permanently. You’ll have a new fresh body and she’ll be trapped inside the dying crone.” The demon lord leaned forward. “Don’t tell me you haven’t considered it.” “Young,” said Hagatha, staring into the darkness with troubled eyes. “A whole new life, free of duty and of the shadow of the Love-Talker.” “Whitney’s wasting her time,” persuaded the Prince of Fibs, “squandering her potential playing super-hero for the mortals. You know you don’t approve.” “I’m proud of my daughter. She is becoming a great witch, maybe the finest of our line.” “Then why haven’t you told her about Jay Boaz?” challenged Blackhurt. “Why haven’t you told her that you know he’s alive, in torment, in Faerie? That it was a changeling impostor that died in his stead?” The Prince of Fibs chuckled. “Because you know if he returns she will continue to be distracted by the Lair Legion and never become the magic-worker you believe she should be? Because you don’t want her to have the romantic happiness that was denied to you? Because that young man took your grand-daughter away from you and you want him to suffer? Or a little bit of all of them?” Hagatha was parchment-pale. “I don’t know. I just haven’t.” “What if I told her?” the demon suggested. “Told her that you knew but kept it from her? How much would she hate you then, do you think? “Quite a lot, I expect,” the old witch admitted. “Whatever happens next, Hagatha, you can’t go back to the way it was before. I won’t allow it. I will destroy Whitney , and she will curse your name. The only question is, will she mouth her hatred with those soft, young lips, or from your ancient, venomous mouth?” “You want me to help you now, to betray my grand-daughter and those seeking to save her, in exchange for Whitney’s flesh and a new life?” “That’s the opportunity I’m offering,” Blackhurt smiled. “Tempted?” Speed was not enough. Mutate reflexes, enhanced stamina, even the ability to control the way velocity and time related meant nothing on this last stretch of road. The thorns on the path ripped at Joshua John Clement, shredding his running suit, tearing long bloody gashes in his legs and arms. Every step was a battle, dragging his feet from thick acid mud, pushing on half-blinded by the pelting sleet. A growing part of Josh’s mind was screaming at him to give up and die. “Whitney,” said DBS. If he stopped now he was damning her, and Xander, and maybe himself. He was failing her, when she had been failed by so many. He couldn’t let that happen. He wouldn’t let her be destroyed. But the road was very steep, and the run was very hard, and Josh slowed from a sprint to a jog, from a jog to a trot, and then to a slogging walk, and then a crawl. And then… Xander the Improbable wore the red robe of an initiate of the Order of the Secret Fire, and he stood behind an eagle lectern and chanted before the pentagram. He had practised this ritual many times but had never got it right. This was his final attempt. It was literally do or die. A chill wind blew through the attic that had nothing to do with the blizzard outside. He tried not to think about Vervain, fleeing through the snow, desperate to escape her pursuer. She hadn’t trusted Alexander Whittaker in the end, hadn’t had faith that their love could prevail over an ancient evil that had sought her since before she was born. And so she had fled. Xander already knew that he wouldn’t find her no matter how hard he looked. Divinations so close to home rarely worked. Xander didn’t know back then, couldn’t know, what Vervain had sensed: the quickening of life within her. Vervain’s mother, Hagatha, had avoided the Demon Lover that was the curse of the Darkness line by becoming pregnant with the child of an eccentric Englishman rather than taking the Demon Lover’s seed, and she had found a way of binding up her enemy to keep him from the daughter that was fruit of her union with Sir Mumphrey Wilton. Now Vervain knew that Xander’s child had quickened in her womb, and the Demon Lover would never rest until it was destroyed or was his. So Vervain fled into the snow, lost in the storm. Later she would stagger half-dead to the doorstep of Covenant House, ancestral home to the Darkness witches, where Hagatha would bring her granddaughter into the world. And soon afte, Vervain would flee again into the night leaving her baby behind, hoping that her mother could raise the girl she had named after it’s father: Whitney. Maybe then the Demon Lover would let Vervain be. But the Demon Lover, although imprisoned by that League of Improbable Gentlemen all those years ago, was old and powerful and not without other resources. If he could not escape the locked room in Covenant House to find his wayward bride, there were other beings in the lower planes willing to act on his behalf. And there was one unexpected ally of unparalleled puissance. Xander’s defences shattered as his spirit-trap dragged Vervain’s pursuer into the material realm. The blue bottles burst into sprays of glass. Carved runes seared themselves off lintel and windows. Delicate parchments burned with hellfire flame. And Blackhurt, Prince of Fibs, rose in the centre of the binding circle before Xander. The mage fell backwards away from the lectern, washed by a wave of pure evil. He knew at once that his precautions were not sufficient to hold off this enemy. “B-blackhurt,” he whispered. “Son of Mefrothto, Prince of Fibs.” “Actually, I’m from a point in the timeline where my dear father is no more,” smirked the Demon Lord. “I am Prince of Fibs, and what power he had is added to my own.” “Ah,” swallowed the mage. “That’s… interesting.” “What’s even more interesting is that I’m coming to you now through your own memories,” Blackhurt smirked. “We’re having a wager, your future self and I, and it looks like I win the race. All I have to do now is kill you here and now and your soul becomes my property.” He allowed himself a demonic chuckle. “This is turning out to be a very good day.” “And you think I’m unprepared to deal with the creature stalking Vervain?” Xander demanded pulling himself up and brushing his dusty robes down. “You think I wouldn’t have a contingency?” “You’re going to put a hamster down my shirt?” Blackhurt flexed his talons. “Bring it on.” De Brown Streak broke through into the memory and toppled to the floor bloody and exhausted. “There he is,” answered Xander the Improbable. Josh Clement looked up as the demon reached down to gut him. “Uh-oh,” he gasped and rolled aside at lightning speed. The talons still tore up the side of his torso. “He’s corporeal,” Xander called to the mutate. “The binding has forced him into flesh. He let it happen because he didn’t think there was anything here that could harm him, and because it was the only way to escape a time-stop that was restraining him in your future that didn’t involve abandoning the victim he was possessing. Kill him now and he’s dead for good.” Blackhurt looked in amazement as the young mage. “That’s it? That’s your plan? You’re actually setting a trap to try and kill me?” And Xander suddenly looked older and more dangerous. “That’s what a master of the mystic crafts is about, Prince of Fibs. It’s about the application of circumstance.” De Brown Streak gathered his wits and attacked the demon, landing hundreds of blows per second with a cumulative force that could shatter concrete. “This is the race, man. Who gets to kill the other first, you or Xander. And I’m the baton carrier.” He grabbed up the candlestick Xander had used before and stabbed it into Blackhurt’s eye. The lord of Hell screamed and slashed DBS across the chest, hammering him back into the wall. Plaster and woodwork crumbled and Josh felt the breath forced from his body. “It’s a long time since I had the physical enjoyment of literally ripping apart opponents,” Blackhurt realised. “Remind me to thank you, mage, for binding me to fleshly form for a moment so I am denied my supernatural powers. Remind me while I torture you to death.” “No thanks are necessary,” said Xander, hurling the flasks of holy water over the demon’s back. Blackhurt howled again, his face flickering through a hundred different forms in an instant as he swung round and smashed lectern and mage alike back into the shelving beyond. Xander went down hard, clutching his chest and gasping. That gave De Brown Streak another chance to attack. He surged forward, pulled the sharpened candlestick from the demon’s eye, and plunged it into the other. Blackhurt’s howl shattered windows for two blocks. “I don’t need to see you to kill you!” he screeched. “I can taste your soul, feeble mortal.” “Probably needs more ketchup,” suggested DBS; but he was slowing down. Blackhurt’s spined tail caught him by surprise, lashing him from behind, ripping up his arm and leg. The demon lord reached down and grabbed him in impossibly strong talons that sliced through Josh’s flesh and burned like acid. Now it was DBS’ turn to scream. “You will plead in hell for all eternity,” the Demon Lord promised Joshua Clement. Xander feebly reached out and completed the last rune on the second summoning circle where he lay. Blackhurt’s reptilian head turned as he sensed the influx of energies. Xander lay there and glared at him. “This isn’t a two-way race, hell-lord,” the master of the mystic crafts snarled at him. “There’s a third runner.” The chronal energies coalesced and Whitney Darkness, the Sorceress, appeared in the centre of Xander’s diagram. She did not look happy. “Blackhurt,” she hissed. “Burn.” Hands that could grasp hellfire were seared with a bright actinic flame. Blackhurt reflexively dropped De Brown Streak and staggered backwards. “You do not have the might to battle a Lord of Hell, child,” he warned Whitney. “You’re not yet a Lord of Hell in this time period,” Xander pointed out. “You haven’t murdered your father yet. And since you arrogantly allowed yourself to be summoned using the binding circle you can’t access your supernatural abilities.” The Sorceress gestured again, the fury and horror in her heart giving strength to her conjurings. Another bolt of nirvanic flame blasted a foot-wide hole in the demon’s chest. “You go, girl,” breathed Josh Clement admiringly. But Blackhurt fought back. He ripped up half the attic floor and hurled it at the Sorceress, battering her back and winning himself a respite. And he still had once ace in the hole. “Hagatha?” he thought, across time and across space. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I must decline your generous offer,” a malevolent old voice echoed in his mind. “Young people these days have no sense of fun. Die, hell-lord, and good riddance.” “You’re turning down life?” “I’m trying to find my knitting pattern. Go away, Blackhurt, you miserable pestilence. Die.” Then the Sorceress was back, drawing upon the very power of the earth itself to reject this unclean intruder, searing, tearing, sundering, with spell after spell ripping at diabolic flesh. “I’m going to destroy you Blackhurt,” Whitney Darkness told him, floating above the ground, her hair and clothes whisked by an unearthly wind, her eyes glowing with blue fire. “You can lodge a complaint afterwards if you think I’m being unfair.” Xander dragged De Brown Streak behind a heavy chest and pulled Harry’s cage down after him. “Wait,” wailed the Prince of Fibs. “We can bargain. I know about your precious Jay!” “You don’t get to say his name!” screamed Whitney. She clenched her fists hard and Blackhurt was shattered into gobbets of steaming meat. Something black and shadowy tried to escape from Xander’s pentagram, but it seemed lodged there. Whitney burned it with upper-planar fire until there was nothing left. “And the prize goes to…” said Xander softly. Epilogue: So Vervain Darkness raced into the blizzard. Her mother helped her through a difficult delivery, but soon after the troubled young woman again fled the whisperings of the Demon Lover that desired her and did not return to Covenant Manse for twenty years. Hagatha raised Whitney, who as they years passed met and fell in love with a summer visitor named Jay Boaz. Time unravelled as it should, until Sorceress and De Brown Streak and Xander were back with Sir Mumphrey Wilton in Balefire’s floating castle during another adventure altogether. Hagatha stared into the darkness and considered how close she had come to accepting Blackhurt’s offer. And the Prince of Fibs? He should have been destroyed right there, gone forever like his father before him, for demons have no souls and face no afterlife. Instead he woke up. “Ah, you are with us,” said a familiar hissing voice. Blackhurt opened his eyes (his restored eyes, and how had that happened?) and looked up at Lord Mefrothto. “Aaagh!” Mefrothto laughed. “What, you think this is some kind of demonic valhalla and I’m here to torment you for eternity for plotting my destruction? Well maybe later. Right now we have other things to do.” “Where am I?” Blackhurt demanded. “How am I? And you…?” “Oh please,” said the businessman in the white suit, “how did you two ever get acknowledged as Hell-Lords? It makes me embarrassed to be on the same plane as you.” Blackhurt recognised another enemy that should be gone forever. “Lucifer?” “They call me Mister Lucifer,” answered the businessman. “And like you and your progenitor I was snatched from destruction by an interfering power.” “Who?” demanded Blackhurt. “Him,” pointed Frightmare, Lord of the Dream Dimensions. Blackhurt now recognised the shifting dreamscape around him. He was in the realm of nightmares, somewhere beyond the mortal subconscious. But he didn’t recognise the strange human-machine hybrid who Frightmare was displaying that hung helplessly in webs of dream and torment. “He’s not at his best right now,” Mefrothto explained, “since we overcame him in his weakened form after he brought us from the brink of oblivion to serve his plans. Sadly, we felt it better if he became our slave and power source to follow his agenda in our own unique way.” A nasty idea came to Blackhurt. “Is that…?” “The artist formerly known as Lord Resolution,” cackled Frightmare. “Now his power is at our bidding. His third and greatest attempt to bring about the Resolution War that ends the Parodyverse was to have been accomplished by subverting the Mythlands and conceptual realms as his new army.” “Unfortunately he picked the wrong lieutenants,” Mr Lucifer said coldly. “Now we have the ordering of the Last Battle.” “Ohhh,” breathed Blackhurt, back from oblivion like his fellow Hell-Lords for one final challenge. “This is going to be good.” “Oh no,” contradicted Mefrotho, caressing Resolution’s helpless cheek. “This is going to be evil.” Next issue: Our heroes have overcome the big blackout, and now all they have to sort is the thousands of transplanar and interstellar portals opening up all over the world. The Hooded Hood has finally got his interview with Dame Jana and intends to make the most of it. And Balefire’s plans continue to unfold, almost as if we were heading up to an anniversary issue. It’s all there in UT#149: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion and Forebears: What Mortals Are Not Meant To Know  Images by Dancer, of course Double, Double, Toil and Footnotes: A Darkness Family Timeline 1856: Hagatha Darkness is born, latest in an unbroken line of Covenant Witches dating back to prehistory. Her father is the Demon Lover (or Love-Talker) who has impregnated almost every female of that line in a bid to breed a witch powerful enough to birth himself into the mortal world. 1877: Hagatha joins the League of Improbable Gentlemen 1878: Hagatha and fellow club member Sir Mumphrey Wilton become lovers. When the Demon Lover tries to claim her the League defeat it and it is imprisoned in an attic in Covenant House, ancestral home of the Darkness family. Later that year, unknown to Mumphrey, Hagatha gives birth to a daughter, Vervain. 1879: Hagatha makes a deal with the demon Blackhurt. In exchange for her soul when she finally dies, he helps her borrow time from Mumphrey, Keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity. She protects the baby from the Demon Lover’s mortal servants (including her own mother) by sending it into the future. 1963: Vervain reappears. Hagatha rears her at Covenant House, but forbids her to learn magic in an attempt to keep her from the Demon Lover’s influence. However, the Love-Talker still whispers to Vervain in her sleep. 1979: Vervain runs away from home and end up on the streets of Paradopolis. 1980: Vervain is rescued by Alexander Whittaker and lives with him in his loft apartment. She flees when she realised the Demon Lover’s allies have found her, to save herself and divert attention from Xander. She is correct in her suspicion that she is pregnant by Xander. At some point after this Xander’s mentor, the sorcerer supreme Lucius Faust, disappears. Xander the Improbable becomes the new sorcerer supreme. 1981: Vervain turns up at Covenant House, wretched and desperate and about to give birth. Hagatha brings the child into the world – Whitney. Vervain flees shortly afterwards leaving Hagatha bring to bring the infant. This time Hagatha tries the opposite technique of honing her granddaughter into the ultimate sorceress. 1982: The Demon Lover’s minions catch up with Vervain again, but this time she is rescued by the mysterious Hollywood V. He brings her to safe haven on the Floating Island of Chemmis, home of the Sect of Buto, a mystic organisation that rescues the innocent and the helpless. 1995: While swimming off the shore by Covenant House, young Whitney Darkness meets holidaymaker Jay Boaz, and over subsequent summers the two of them fall in love. 1996: The Island of Chemmis is invaded and destroyed by the Ass-Raping Ninjas. Vervain flees again. The only other known survivor is the Sect’s field agent and assassin, Cobra. 1998: Like her mother and grandmother before her, Whitney runs away from home to escape the whisperings of the Demon Lover, and like them she ends up in the big city. As Sorceress, Whitney becomes a member of the Abandoned Legion. 1999: The Sorceress joins the Lair Legion to be with her lover Hatman – Jay Boaz. Shortly thereafter the Demon Lover escapes from his imprisonment and comes to seduce and corrupt Whitney Darkness. This culminates in his attempt to destroy Hatman, and in Whitney and Hagatha’s stand against the Covenant Witches of the ages in UT#33: True, Dare, Kiss, Promise. The Demon Lover is destroyed at last. 2000: Hagatha fakes her own death in an elaborate and successful ploy to get out of her bargain with Blackhurt (as detailed in UT#41: The Last Will and Testament of Hagatha Darkness), but this reveals the truth about both Vervain and Whitney’s fathers. Vervain reappears and gives her life to thwart Blackhurt and save her family. 2003: On a mission to Faerie, a wounded Hatman is captured and frozen in time by a fey shapeshifter who takes his form to have his way with Whitney. Before he can attempt his wicked deed, the faux-Hatman is killed in combat with Ultzon, but everyone believes the real Hatman has died. Whitney makes her pact with Blackhurt in an attempt to bring her lover back to life; which she cannot do because Jay is not truly dead. The details are in UT#123: Happily Ever After, UT#138: Head Games (Version Two) or Once More With Feeling and UT#133: Lair Legion vs the Sorceress: Dead End. Of course, this being comics-time, the more recent dates may slip forward as the years pass, so assuming now is 2004 you can always adjust the chronology by just working back from the present. You have been warned. All clear now? I really recommend you reading UT#41: The Last Will and Testament of Hagatha Darkness), which is a kind of sequel to this story really. It might come out fresh to many of you. Looking at the replies I was amazed to note that nearly everyone who responded then doesn’t do so now, and very few people who are now active on the board replied to that particular tale. Lords of Hell and Friends Mefrothto, Prince of Fibs, debuted way back in the third Hooded Hood Chronicle, The Hooded Hood Fathered My Love-Child, wherein we learned of him holding a hostage dear to the cowled crime czar’s heart. His other crimes against the Hood led to his eventual destruction in UT#33: True, Dare, Kiss, Promise, when he was stabbed by Knifey, a blade that seems able to kill even conceptual beings. Blackhurt, Prince of Fibs was one of Mefrothto’s many spawn, and helped arrange his father’s demise to assume his position. This is all good demonic etiquette. Blackhurt has battled our heroes on many occasions, and was overdue for a really good slapping. Mr Lucifer, an older and more subtle manifestation of original evil, was behind many of the events around the fall and destruction of Messenger, his ancient foe. Mr Lucifer actually got as far as triggering the Biblical apocalypse before he was stopped at the cost of the postman’s life and his actions were wound back; so he’s had plenty of practise for ending worlds. Since Messenger’s back from the dead too there may be a natural rematch there. Frightmare, lord of bad dreams and master of the nightmare realms, first appeared in Dancer #2: Rampage of the Giant Killer Turnip. His major brush with the Lair Legion to date was in UT#96: The Nightmare Scenario, where he tried to arrange for Exile to destroy his team-mates and nearly got away with it – if it weren’t for those darned kids! And though he doesn’t appear in this story, the bad guys also intend to recruit the destroyed Lord of the Dreary Dimension, Dread Dormaggadon, a powerful extraplanar tyrant who was destroyed by the machinations of Xander and the Hooded Hood. So guess who Dormaggadon’s going to want to go after first. But don’t hold your breath for this plot to unfold. Mr Lucifer likes to bide his time and lay his plans very carefully. He wants everything to be just right when the time comes to utterly destroy his adversaries and then all creation. Give him eight or nine issues. Then hide. The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2004 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2004 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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