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Post By Things get serious, as recounted by... the Hooded Hood Wed Nov 24, 2004 at 01:49:12 pm EST |
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#191: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: The Siege of Herringcarp | |
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#191: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: The Siege of Herringcarp What Has Gone Before: The Hellraisers, a powerful band of extraplanar marauders, have escaped captivity and seek to free their final member from Herringcarp Asylum, home of the archvillainous Hooded Hood. They have also undertaken forays to weaken the Lair Legion, including setting Night Nurse Grace O’Mercy to unwillingly transform Hatman into a vampire and infecting Goldeneyed and Beth Shellett with a virulent disease. The Lair Legion have yet to realise they are under attack, so Visionary is retrieving his ward Kerry from an explosive visit to Badripoor while Dancer and Lisa have another concern to address. And the storm gathers. ** This issue contains a few gory bits ** Halfway along the causeway the road changed. The modern tarmac became pitted flagstones and cobbles. The metallic crash barrier protecting unwary vehicles from the drop into the ocean became a crumbled stone wall. And the modern glass and steel medical facility with the sea view at the far end of the causeway became an ancient collection of towers and buttresses ringed by a high wall topped with broken glass. This was the true face of Herringcarp Asylum, which few visitors saw and fewer were glad to see. The angry ocean spumed up the cliffs wetting the pitted granite walls and great black crows wheeled high above. “What this place could use,” said Dancer, “is a cheerful Welcome mat.” “I’m not sure the Hooded Hood really wants a woman’s touch,” Lisa Waltz replied. “Well, not that kind anyway.” “Which is what brings us to Herringcarp really, isn’t it?” Dancer sighed. “That little throwaway remark that Dark Thugos made when we tracked him down during the Transworlds Challenge.” “That doesn’t bother me,” denied the first lady of the Lair Legion. “Everybody knows he’s the Hooded Hood’s son from another reality. So what if there was a different mother there to the woman who bore the Hood his twins in this timeline?” “And that it could be me or you?” Sarah Shepherdson shuddered. “If you’re so unconcerned then why are you here?” “I want to check up on Sorceress,” Lisa answered. “That’s all. She apparently made some pact that means she has to stay at this damned Asylum with Iolodbaoth. I want to check she’s really here of her own free will.” “And not even ask the Hood if he happened to father the Destroyer of Tales on an alternate timeline you?” “If the topic comes up in conversation I may enquire,” admitted Lisa. The two women completed the journey to the front door and pulled the chime. “Are you going to shout at me?” asked Kerry Shepherdson. She was still soaking wet from the fire hoses and shivering beneath the soggy towel. “Maybe later,” Visionary replied as he set the Lairjet autopilot to take them back to Paradopolis. “When you’re warmer.” “I wish you’d shout at me,” Kerry admitted. “Why?” “I’m used to people shouting at me. I can handle that.” Visionary came aft to sit beside his bedraggled ward. “Why did you blow up the Royal Palace of Badripoor?” he asked her. He frowned a little. “Was spiffy getting fresh?” “Actually yes,” Kerry admitted. The possibly fake man sent to bring her back to the US frowned. “Why that little…” “But not with me,” Dancer’s little sister explained. “With his secretary. He’s really getting Presidential, huh? spiff and Bev Campbell, they make a nice couple.” “You stole a Lairjet and went to Badripoor to find spiffy, but when you got there he wasn’t alone,” Vizh realised. “And you… lost your temper?” “I was just surprised, is all. As if I care what Mark Hopkins does with his bimbo PA. And I lost control of my probability powers for a moment.” spiffy had managed to absorb the energy from most of the fires. “There weren’t any serious casualties,” Vizh told Kerry. “Oh, well that’s alright then,” the girl said bitterly. “Lucky me.” Visionary tried another tack. “I still don’t understand why you came all the way to Badripoor to see spiffy,” he ventured. Kerry shot him a scornful look that was somewhat spoiled by the slight tremble of her lower lip. “You wouldn’t.” she replied. “What do you think I came for? But Bev already had that position taken.” Vizh blanched. “I thought we talked about this, Kerry. You’re too young to…” “To have feelings?” the probability arsonist snarled. “To belong? To want to have one person who feels something for me and doesn’t go away? But I’m old enough to blow up palaces and nearly kill everybody.” “You have people who love you, Kerry,” Visionary assured her. “Maybe not that way, yet, but when the time comes and I’ve run a full security and credit check on him and you’ve dated for a decade or so under proper chaperoned supervision…” “Everybody hates me because I’m a troublemaking public menace,” the girl told him. “And I just proved them right. I thought… maybe I could find a way to be more than I am. Maybe Mark would like me if I… And then I thought I’d killed everybody by being a stupid whiney idiot… I thought…” She sniffed fiercely. “I am not crying,” she warned Visionary. “I don’t cry.” “If I promise to tell everybody that you set my coat on fire, can I give you a hug?” Kerry shrugged awkwardly. “If you need to, I guess I could stand it.” Visionary put his arms round the distraught girl and held her tight. She buried her head on his shoulder and began to sob. After a while she flung her arms round his neck and held on as tight as she could. “Not everybody hates you, Kerry,” Vizh promised her. “Shep, your family, the Juniors, even spiffy when his scorches heal…” “You all think I’m a dangerous mad pain-in-the-ass,” Kerry sobbed. “Our dangerous mad pain-in-the-ass,” Visionary promised her. “And don’t you forget it.” Kerry snuffled a little and relaxed just a little. “You won’t abandon me?” “I won’t abandon you.” “Promise?” “I promise.” Kerry hugged him in silence for a long time and then she asked, “Can I have a motor-bike?” The Lair Legion Operations Room was busy. Mumphrey had set interns Art and Randy to work sifting through the police and medical reports that were pouring in. Asil and Hallie were still working the phones, checking any reports that might lead to the whereabouts of the missing Lisette. “Nats and Falcon have just checked in,” Asil reported to Sir Mumphrey Wilton. “Aerial reconnaissance hasn’t picked anything up yet. They’re extending their perimeter. CSFB! and Trickshot are hitting the informer network, literally as I understand it. Cressida and Yo are co-ordinating with the World Health Organisation in setting up quarantine zones. Uhuna’s down at the Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital with Mindy and, um, Trisha I guess, trying to get some word on Goldeneyed and Bethany Shellett.” “Have we any word on Dr Whitfield yet on the cause of this epidemic?” demanded the eccentric Englishman. “An unknown viral infection, airborne, resistant to most of the usual counters,” Al B. Harper reported, looking up from a cluttered workstation where he was logging the virus samples against known rare metanormal disease forms. “I can see why Dr Whitfield declared a national medical emergency. If we don’t pin this down it we could be looking at a body count in the hundreds of thousands. Maybe worse.” “Yes,” Hallie chipped in. “There are some similarities to a plague that claimed nearly five thousand lives in Shanghai back in August.” “There are lots of similarities with the accounts of the Black Death that decimated Europe in the fifteenth century,” added the Librarian. “Except this version doesn’t seem to be carried by fleas on rats. And Europe wasn’t truly decimated, because that literally means killing only every tenth man. It was every third man, woman, and child that died.” “Have Epitome and the Shoggoth got anywhere with locating Daio Waltz?” Mumphrey wondered. “We could use a geneticist of her ability.” “The South American ranch was abandoned,” Asil reported. “Well, there were apparently some killer bovines left behind for the Shoggoth to absorb, but that’s about all. No good would have come of involving that big doody anyway. ” “Estimated numbers of people infected in the Big Banana?” asked Amber St Clair, the LL’s government liaison. “A couple of hundred cases so far,” Asil answered, checking Art’s notes. “No fatalities as yet. And Beth is the index case.” “Beth won’t die,” Art Corben objected. “Princess Uhuna’s gone to heal her, right?” “Uhuna can only shift illnesses from one biosystem to another,” Al B. reminded the worried young man. “And then only between broadly compatible physiologies. Otherwise she could just shift the disease into some lab rats and everybody would be cured.” “Then what’s the point of her being there?” demanded Randy Robinson. “She can transfer secondary symptoms, to alleviate systemic failure,” Hallie explained. “Tricia, being the former Temporary Death, can sense when people are coming close to dying. That’s a helpful indicator. Mindy volunteered to help her because she’s a robot so she can’t catch the virus.” “Apparently she’s now a Robo-American,” Art sighed. “Good for her,” snorted Mumphrey. “About time you made an honest Robo-American of her anyway, young Corben.” “Any word on Hatman yet, Hallie?” the Librarian asked. He liked everything filed in its proper place, and Jay Boaz didn’t habitually ignore emergency calls. “Nope. I think his comm-card’s off,” the AI replied. “That must have been a very good date last night.” “I have the President’s Office on line one,” Amber called to the leader of the Lair Legion. “They’re wanting to know if we think this is a terrorist attack using weapons of mass destruction.” Mumphrey glanced at his support team. “Do we?” he asked them. When nobody could tell him he scowled. “Damned coincidental that the index case is close friends to a Legionnaire who can teleport in here any time he likes.” “Good evening,” said the Hooded Hood. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?” “Oh, we just wanted to chat a bit,” Dancer told him. “Old times, a bit of gossip. You know. Like who Dark Thugos’ mother was, that kind of thing.” The sky outside darkened as a storm gathered around the asylum. “That’s a somewhat personal question,” the cowled crime czar noted. “We’re personally interested in the answer,” retorted Lisa. She settled down for a long word-battle with the Hooded Hood. “It was neither of you,” the Hood told her quickly, glancing at the brewing tempest. “Now I suggest you leave before the storm closes in and you have to stay the night.” Dancer was surprised at his sudden abruptness, and more so at his plain direct answer. “What’s the rush?” she asked. “Not that I’m not used to all my ex-boyfriends running when they see me, but…” “This is not a convenient time for you to visit,” the archvillain warned them. “Well then,” Lisa said, sensing an advantage, “you just answer a few more salient questions and we’ll be on our way. Such as what the deal is between you and Sorceress.” “She’s not Dark Thugos’ mother, is she?” Dancer frowned. “Whitney Darkness sought help from me to restore Jay Boaz, who was then her lover, from imprisonment in Faerie. I agreed on condition that she undertook a wager on his behaviour, on whether he would choose an altered reality in which he was happy with his Sorceress or the real world with all its injustices. Hatman of course chose reality, and thus Whitney became indentured to me. Now you must leave.” “If you’re so concerned you can shift us home via your Portal of Prentiousness,” Dancer pointed out. “Not at the moment, I’m afraid,” the cowled crime czar confessed. “Those ways are being monitored. You really have come at a most unfortunate time.” “Why?” demanded Lisa. “Ioldobaoth, what’s going on?” The great bell in the old monastic tower began to swing wildly, clanging alarum. The causeway beyond the asylum erupted and was shattered into shards. “Herringcarp Asylum is now under siege,” the Hooded Hood told his guests. “By the Hellraisers.” Grace O’Mercy wept, but her tears were red with blood. She picked herself up from the corner where she was huddled and groped past the bed, never looking at it, to the chair by her dresser. She fumbled for the white cotton nurse’s smock that meant so much for her and wrestled it on to cover her nakedness. The blood down her front stained through the uniform. She reached for her cap by instinct, then shied away from it. There was a red cross on the front of her headpiece, and now she could not endure it. She knew why, of course. The answer was lying on the bed. Jay Boaz, Hatman, her date for the evening, was dead. She had drained him of blood, and worse she had fed him her own unholy ichor. In three nights’ time he would awake as a vampire like her. Grace struggled to hold onto the last fragments of her sanity. Nosferos the Undying, ancient master-vampire of the Hellraisers, had gone now; but his commands still squirmed around her brain, soiling her thoughts and enslaving her will: You will see to his needs. You will keep him secret and safe until the time of his awakening, and then you will protect him while he makes his first kill. You will bring him something easy, a child maybe, for the time when he is reborn. She was shaking like an addict now, as the blood-rush hit her. She had avoided drinking the blood of living things for so long, even the blood of lesser animals. She had never realised what a dark thrill the claiming of life’s blood was. She hated how much she loved it. She tried to open her cellphone, to call for help. Her hands wouldn’t co-operate. She was bound by Nosferos’ command. She had only one choice. From her refrigerator she dragged the plastic sachets of plasma and whole blood she’d brought home with her. They were all the same blood type as Jay; she’d checked his medical record. She laid them round him on the bloody bed, trying not to vomit. Nosferos has told her what she must do. He had never told her that was all she must do. The Night Nurse fumbled in her purse and pulled out the cloth cap she’d concealed there when she’d left work: She unfolded it and read the logo on it: PHM Blood Transfusion Service. She pulled it over Hatman’s cranium and held it in place. And she prayed. “Please,” she whispered. “I know you don’t want to hear from me. I know what I’ve done. I’m so sorry. But this isn’t about me, it’s about him. Jay. Please… he doesn’t deserve this.” She stroked the cap smooth across his head. “If he was alive, he could use his power. Maybe he could transfuse the blood from these bags, or from me, and he could save himself. Maybe he still can.” Jay lay there, unmoving, unbreathing.” “I killed him and gave him the curse of undeath,” Grace went on. “That’s a bond between us, more intimate than sex. He’s mine because of that. Surely even now I can command him to use his powers and save himself!” She clung to the hero she’d murdered and wept. This was in her orders. She was seeing to his needs. She was keeping him safe until his awakening. She was doing all she could, whatever it cost her. “Every day,” the Night Nurse pleaded, “every day I see people hurt and dying, all the horrible things that happen to folks, that one person does to another. Every day, I try and patch people up, hold them together, keep them going in a world that’s so dark and painful. I see evil all around, such darkness. Surely in all that, there’s got to be some good as well? Some spark of hope? Some justice?” He hugged Jay’s dead weight to her. “He was hope, and justice, and he didn’t deserve to die. Can’t you give us just one little chance, to fight the dark? Another tear streamed down Grace’s face, and this one was crystal clear. It dripped from her face and splashed on Hatman’s forehead. Lightning flashed outside the window as the storm swept in from Gothametropolis. The bags of blood emptied. Then Grace felt herself chill and weaken and had she not been lying on the bed she would have fallen to the floor. She gasped at the pain, as if a part of her was being ripped away. Jay Boaz jerked once and retched, then clutched a hand to his wounded neck. Hatman was alive. The storm that rumbled towards the city was in full force over Herringcarp Asylum. The old building shook with the force of the thunder. The wind howled its hate. “I don’t suppose you’d care to explain what’s going on now, Ioldobaoth?” Lisa enquired. “I am under siege,” the Hooded Hood told her. “Surrounded. And you are confined here with me.” “For how long?” worried Dancer. Herringcarp Asylum always creeped her out. There were old memories for her here. And now the shadows seemed darker and colder than ever. “Until I am destroyed,” replied the archvillain. “You are aware by now that some third force used agents in an attempt to stop you in the Transworlds Challenge?” “Some bozos called the Hellraisers sent the Heralds and the Super-Skunk and Chronic,” Dancer agreed. “They wanted to stop you getting the Starseed.” “Because the Starseed was my best chance of stopping them and their masters,” concluded the Hood. The window shattered inwards with the gale, but he gestured and suddenly it had always been shuttered. “These Hellraisers are here, now?” Lisa asked, looking nervously over her shoulder. She was appalled to discover that the only thing that scared her more than the idea of the Hooded Hood being in control was the feeling that maybe he wasn’t. “Indeed. They are five extraplanar entities of remarkable power who have somehow learned to operate as a team in order to conquer and ravage dimensions. On their previous attempt to invade this reality they were tricked, divided, and imprisoned by a consortium of humans led by Lucius Faust, then the sorcerer supreme. The Hellraiser’s leader, the Chain Knight, was imprisoned on Flanagan Island, beneath the Safe that was built to facilitate his confinement. Each of the other four was detained in a manner fitting to their nature.” “Why weren’t they just killed?” Lisa demanded. “Because they had arranged whole dimensions would die if they did so, and it took years to defuse those machinations. It would have been better to slaughter them and take the consequences.” “Says the self-proclaimed archvillain,” snorted Dancer. “Can’t we just have Lisa summons the Lair Legion here and we kick their butts?” “I calculate that the Legion would all die against them in a little under five minutes,” the Hooded Hood replied. “And if Lisa uses her summonsing power here she will open a conduit which the Hellraisers could also exploit to bypass my defences.” Lisa concentrated and checked whether that felt right to her. It did. A malevolent force was pressing against the non-geographic byways of the site, seeking a crack to gain entrance. “So what, we just wait here until they find a way in?” the amorous advocatrix demanded. “Did you specially fix it so you were trapped in your house for the long haul with two hot women? Stocking up for a siege?” “They cannot enter Herringcarp while my precautions are in force,” the Hooded Hood replied. “Why do they want to get here anyhow?” wondered Dancer. “What have you done to them, Hood? What aren’t you telling us? What’s your angle?” “Faust called upon old acquaintance with me for assistance during his last stand against these foes,” admitted the cowled crime czar. “I aided in their capture, and I assented to imprison the most vicious of their number here in Herringcarp Asylum. The Bloodreaper is confined in the dungeons below to this day.” “The Bloodreaper,” sighed Lisa. “He sounds cheerful.” “A berserker executioner who is empowered by the lives he takes. The more he kills the stronger he becomes. And he has taken many lives.” “So they’ve come for their buddy,” Dancer understood. “But they can’t get in, and he can’t get out. He can’t get out, can he?” “Not without assistance,” the Hooded Hood replied. Whitney Darkness unfastened the last of the wards in the deep vault beneath the Asylum. It took almost the last of her strength and every scrap of her skill. Now only a single bolt restrained the Bloodreaper from freedom. “Let me out,” the demon of slaughter mocked her. “If you dare.” “I am protected by Pact with your leader from coming to harm,” the Sorceress told him. “And there is nothing I would not dare to have my revenge on those who manipulated me and brought such grief.” “A true witch, then,” the Bloodreaper agreed. “Pull back the bar.” “And then what?” “And then I will let in my allies, and we shall destroy the Hooded Hood.” Whitney slammed the bolt open and stepped away quickly. “Be free, then,” she proclaimed. The six hired killers sloped into the Gothametropolis Bus Station, where dozens of midnight passengers were staring gloomily at the cancellations board which reflected that worsening weather. They split up and skirted round the echoing windy halls, looking for their quarry. He was sat alone, muffled against the wind in a big heavy coat, and the suitcase was beside him. In the trunk was the shipment of Shazam, the latest black market short-term metahuman power stimulation drugs, the load that had gone astray when the courier had skipped his meeting earlier. The product might cause fatal embolisms in a quarter of those who used it, but the high of being stoned with temporary super-powers was so good that the contents of this one case alone were worth thirty million dollars. The men who had come to get it back for the Lynchpin ranged casually about their prey, ready for the kill. Then suddenly their target rolled aside and came up holding handguns, taking down two of the men with his first action. That was when they realised the courier had been replaced by somebody else, somebody far more deadly. “Messenger!” one of them mouthed before his face became a bullet-ruined pulp. “No, really?” the postman asked as he tossed a fan of razor-letters at the punk behind him. “You think?” The punk behind him shrugged the sharpened steel rectangles off as if they were nothing. “Hah! Not so tough when you’re up against a meta, are you?” Steelback mocked. Messenger abandoned the luggage and jumped aside as a splash of molten metal sprayed from Steelback’s hand. He peeled off a brown-wrapped parcel and slid it to the super-powered goon’s feet. “Actually” he answered as the parcel bomb went off, hurling Steelback away, “it turns out I am.” Four men were down, but two remained. One grabbed up the suitcase and fled to the waiting unmarked van. Nobody in the panic-stricken bus station made to stop him. The other gestured dramatically and rooted Messenger to the spot with psionic control over muscles. “Not so cocky now, postman?” Muscleman asked. “Oh, I’m gonna get such a bonus for this.” Messenger defied the control and took a step forward. Muscleman’s confident smirk vanished. Then he felt a slight twinge in his throat. Then his head fell off. Messenger could move again. He stared down at the gory decapitated metahuman and then at the slight young woman who had slaughtered him. “We have to stop meeting like this,” he said to Keiko. The Garden City assassin shrugged and cleaned her blade on the fallen man. “I could have taken him, you know,” Messenger assured her. “I know,” Keiko agreed. “I was bored, and I’m in a hurry.” She gestured to the black van squealing away with the retrieved suitcase. “They’re getting away.” “Not really,” the postman told her. He pulled a small pen-shaped instrument from his coat and thumbed the trigger. The valise exploded, taking out crew and van with it. In the distance the wail of sirens heralded the arrive of Mayor Klein’s new anti-vigilante police task force. “I’ve been asked to collect you,” Keiko told Messenger. The postman looked the attractive Oriental assassin up and down and broke into a grizzled grin. “Lead on,” he said. “I‘m yours.” The Hellraisers ripped through the fabric of Herringcarp from inside and out. The Bloodreaper’s scythe-blade sliced through stone and contingency with equal ease. It took less than half an hour for him to be reunited with his comrades, and at last the Hellraisers were complete. “And now,” the escaped slaughter-demon howled, “I want the Hood!” Lisa and Dancer raced down the concealed tunnel away from the carnage. “Should we really be abandoning him right now, when baddies are coming to kill him?” Dancer doubted. “First, he is a baddie himself,” Lisa answered. “Second, he’s able to use nastier ways of defending himself if we’re not there to get in the way, or to judge him. Third, he wanted us to get away. This is his choice.” “But what sort of villains can make the Hooded Hood scared?” Dancer worried. “The sort that come with powerful unknown sponsors with sufficient clout to displace Death and neutralise the Triumvirate,” Lisa replied. “We have to get out of here and warn Mumphrey and the Legion. We have a situation.” Then the Chain Knight stepped out before them. “I wonder,” he said as the many chains growing out of his blood-crusted body writhed to grasp the women, “if the Hooded Hood sent you this way in ignorance of my presence here, or because he knew you would keep me occupied?” “Or maybe he knew we’d kick your ass?” suggested Lisa, struggling with the chains that wrapped her. “I summons D…” “No,” Sir Lucian told her as a chain choked off her breath and silenced her. “I think this should be a private party. Your abilities only work if you can proclaim your summonses in the proper form. No breath, no summonsing.” Lisa struggled but the chains were bone-splinteringly strong. Dancer had improbably managed to avoid every one of the lashing shackled that Sir Lucian had sent at her. “Let her go!” she demanded, and as she twisted the ceiling above the Chain Knight collapsed, spilling heavy masonry onto his armoured head. He didn’t seem to notice. He sent more chains shooting forward, large chains, small chains, all flailing out to seize the Probability Dancer; and each one diminished the chances of her avoiding capture. Lisa feebly gestured that Sarah Shepherdson should flee and save herself. Dancer ran up a wall and somersaulted over to plant both feet into the Chain Knight’s helm. Sir Lucian staggered back as his faceplate buckled away. Dancer saw his torture-ruined face and gasped. In that moment a score of chains enmeshed her, jerking arms and legs outwards until she was painfully spreadeagled in the air as Lisa was. And the Chain Knight laughed. Hatman felt like hell and he could hardly stand. He dragged on his Steelers cap but his powers were so depleted there was hardly any effect. The blood clotted quicker though so he kept it on. Grace O’Mercy cowered in the corner, her dishevelled uniform stained crimson, her mouth still crusted with Jay’s dried blood. She fumbled the stake to Hatman and closed her eyes. “Make it quick,” she begged. “What?” Hatman asked, forcing himself to stay on his feet. “What do you mean?” Grace shuddered. “I’m a vampire. I took your blood and killed you. I’m unclean, not fit to live. Oh please, end it for me! End it now.” Jay looked in horror at what had become of the caring, competent young woman he’d known before. “Grace? You’ve got to explain. I… I remember you kissing my neck… biting me. And you… I drank some of your blood too.” “To make you into a vampire like me,” the Night Nurse confessed. “Oh, I’ve tried so hard, Jay, so hard not to become what I really know I am. I didn’t mean to do that to you – but I wanted to.” “You weren’t alone,” Hatman remembered. “There was someone else here too. Someone in command.” “Nosferos the undying, a master-vampire,” Grace supplied. “He can enslave me whenever he wants, it seems. He made me… well, this is what he made me into.” She crumpled into a miserable bundle in the corner and sobbed some more. Hatman put down the stake. “Then how am I still alive?” he wondered. “I am still alive, aren’t I? Not a…” “You’re alive,” Grace assured him. “I brought a blood transfusion cap. It was a desperate hope. I couldn’t disobey Nosferos’ orders in any way, but I thought maybe I could do something extra, something he never thought of, that he hadn’t forbidden me to do.” “So you saved my life as well,” Jay concluded. “Do no harm,” Grace quoted, clutching her knees to her breast and shuddering. “That’s what we’re supposed to be about. The first rule. Do no harm. And look at me!” She blinked away the tears of blood that stained her cheeks and looked fiercely up at Hatman. “I’ve tasted it now, Jay. I’ve drunk life’s blood and I want more. I can’t control it. Please, you have to kill me!” Phleglethor led the attack on the Hooded Hood’s throne room, bursting through the wall belching caustic gases and sweating toxins. “Good evening,” said the cowled crime-czar. “You are trespassing. I suggest you leave.” “You ssshould have fled when you had the chance,” hissed Nosferos, rising up behind him. “I never had a genuine chance to flee,” the Hood replied, and suddenly the lunging vampire was scalded to the bone by the holy water traps he now remembered blundering into earlier. “Only an opportunity to be less than myself.” The damaged floor of the throne room collapsed, spilling the massive corpulence of Phleglethor into the darkness below. A dimension-ripping whip hooked around the Hood’s wrist and dragged him to the ground. Maladomini cartwheeled forward and stamped one iron hell-spike through the archvillain’s hand. The Hood snarled and his eyes flashed greenly. Then he was whole again and the sleek dominatrix was writhing in agony from the flesh-eating bacteria that had infected her weeks ago. The Bloodreaper screamed in rage and blurred forward, catching the Hood’s retcons on his blade-edge and slicing through them with impunity. “Fear me, little villain!” the Hellraiser screamed. “Fear me!” “I think not,” snapped the Hood, and suddenly the crushing damage from earlier encounters splintered every bone in the Bloodreaper’s body. “Who do you think you are facing, you mad dog? I am the Hooded Hood, and you will regret ever transgressing on my domain!” But then Pheglethor was back, infecting the Hood with suppurating boils and sores that staggered him to his knees. The Hood retconned that but before he could counterattack Nosferos ripped his throat out in one clean motion. Another change of continuity, and Nosferos has missed by the barest whisker. The Hood turned to destroy the undead but Maladomini’s dimension-tearing whip lashed along his cheek, searing him to the bone with dark dimensional energies. The archvillain overcame the wash of agony that threatened his reason and arranged for the lash to pass him by and instead enmesh the Bloodreaper who was ignoring his critical injuries to lurch forward for a killing scythe-blow. The progress of the assault had been laughably obvious to the cowled crime-czar. The Hood staggered back to the wall, at bay, while his enemies regrouped. “Very well done,” the Chain Knight applauded, appearing to join the others. “I’m genuinely impressed. Your reputation is deserved.” “I expect to surpass it before we have done today,” the cowled crime czar promised. “You will bitterly regret the day you ever crossed… the Hooded Hood.” “I believe in nurturing talent,” Sir Lucian responded. “If you will swear to serve me now and always you can still survive.” “The Hooded Hood is no man’s lackey.” “Good,” approved the Chain Knight. “Then let’s try the next test.” He flexed his chains and dragged Dancer and Lisa into view, showing they were his helpless prisoners. Unable to move, Dancer could not use her probability alterations. Unable to speak, Lisa could not summons help. “Surrender or your women die,” suggested Sir Lucian. “I need hardly add that they will die slowly and horribly.” “I am an archvillain,” the Hood responded. “Why do people keep overlooking that?” “I think you are an archvillain with a weakness,” the Chain Knight suggested. “Shall we put it to the test?” He flexed his chains and Dancer screamed. “You will not harm them!” the Hood snapped. “Or what?” The Chain Knight’s current status as the personification of Death was enough to protect him from easy retcon. There was only one way for Lisa and Dancer to be saved. “You will vow, all of you, a binding Pact, that if I… if I yield to you they will not be harmed in any way, by omission or commission. That they will be safe from any harm by you or yours, or by your neglect.” “We don’t need to bargain,” Maladomini boasted. “You can’t last much longer anyway. You are nigh dead upon your feet.” “How much are you willing to stake upon that, Hellraiser?” asked the cowled crime czar. “How high do you want to raise the stakes? I will go all the way!” “We have underestimated the resourcefulness of our enemies before,” Lucian cautioned. “And this enemy seems particularly resourceful.” He stared at the Hooded Hood. “If we make this bargain,” he declared, “you understand that you will not be spared? That their safety is bought by your torment? And that this bargain lasts only until they ask it be revoked?” “I understand,” answered the Hooded Hood; and the moment he had foreseen and dreaded had arrived, when his appalling weakness was revealed. “Keep them safe as we have agreed, and from this moment I will yield to you.” Lisa and Dancer watched in disbelief as the Hood and the Chain Knight clasped hands on a Pact. The Hood’s eyes glowed greenly as he surrendered. “Yes,” noted the Chain Knight. “I really don’t think I trust you with those powers of yours intact.” And he reached over to the Hood and gouged out both his eyes. The Hood staggered back, groping blindly in agony while his enemies laughed. “Hurt him,” the Chain Knight told his comrades. “Let’s have a little fun.” Next Issue: Things get grimmer. As the pestilence spreads, Hatman deals with Grace, Phleglethor visits Uhuna, Mumphrey discovers Lisa and Dancer’s fate, Sorceress faces the Chain Knight, Keiko’s recruiting mission continues, and our heroes take their first serious casualties. Not a lot of laughs next time, in UT#192: Full of Sound and Fury None Are So Blind As Them That Will Not Footnote: Dark Thugos, former Tyrant of the Sol Empire and current Destroyer of Tales, offered oblique hints about his true parentage in UT#177: Pit Stops Whitney Darkness, the Sorceress forged her pact with the Hooded Hood just before UT#161: The Return of Hatman, or Hopes, Dreams, and Wishes, and the consequences are detailed in that chapter. The Vampire Legionnaire sub-plot was first mentioned by the cowled crime-czar in A Day in the Life of… the Hooded Hood in July 2002; but we get to these things eventually. The Hellraisers are a band of very evil interdimensional marauders. Sir Lucian, the Chain Knight was a great paladin of light who was corrupted by long torture and evil sorceries to become a thing of torture and evil himself. Appearing as a bloody armoured knight with dozens of living chains growing from his ruptured flesh, Sir Lucian has the gift of binding and breaking of bonds and locks. He has recently murdered the personification of Death and taken her power and authority. Nosferos the Undying is a gaunt, pale, bald, ancient elder-vampire, possessing all the legendary abilities of the undead. He can command lesser creatures of the night (and that includes most other undead as well as rats, bats, wolves and slimy things), summon foul weather and famine, smell fear, and hypnotise. He’s also an accomplished black magician. Phleglethor the Pestilent is a huge corpulent red-skinned plague-demon with the gift of all diseases. His vast bulk regenerates almost instantly from any wound, and most of his disgusting bodily processes can be used offensively. His effluvia is toxic and flammable, his vomit caustic, his phlegm acidic, and he has a whole range of things he can fart. He can cause any disease at will, and even tailor special illnesses for special occasions. Maladomini, mistress of pain, is a former Guardian of the Booke of the Law (a cosmic office currently held by Lisa), stripped of her office for dark debauchery and sin. She has become a succubus, immune to all harm from men and wielder of a lash that can tear through dimensions. She is the secret girlfriend Harlagaz is keeping from his friends. The Bloodreaper, a sadistic super-strong scythe-wielding killing machine has deity level strength, speed, stamina, and invulnerability. Murder makes him stronger, and his scythe drinks the spirit of those he slaughters. He enjoys carnage. It’s his hobby. 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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