“But of course,” the sorceress said. “That is to say, you’ll try. One more thing. Have your airplane ready for flight.” Without warning, she collapsed.
Caught by surprise, this time Kurt wasn’t quick enough to grab her, and she thumped down heavily onto the floor. Hastily he stooped over her, dropping into the crouch which was as natural to him as standing erect. She gazed blankly up at him for a moment, and then her face twisted into a mask of anguish. Sobbing hysterically, she flung herself into his arms.
Chapter 3
When the woman woke, she was hanging in a gray-black void. Everything was silent and all of it—the darkness, the emptiness, and the quiet—seemed to echo the hollowness in her head. At first she had no thoughts at all, not even the suspicion that such a vacancy was wrong.
Then a surge of raw, instinctive terror jolted her, shrieking that she was in danger, demanding that she focus. Peering wildly about, she perceived the broad expanse of the river beneath her and, after a fashion, her intellect lurched to life. She still didn’t know precisely where she was, how she’d come to be there, or even who she was, but she recognized that she wasn't floating after all. She was plummeting through a benighted, rain-swept sky toward a lethal collision with the surface of the water far below.
She wanted to scream, to beg the remorseless and impersonal powers of Nature for a mercy they would never grant, to shriek out her rage at the doom that was overtaking her. Yet some instinct implored her not to panic, insisting in defiance of all reason that she possessed the ability to save herself if she could only draw it forth.
When she groped for that capacity, she actually did sense it inside her, but the discovery failed to blunt the fear still clawing at her mind. The talent, whatever it was, had shriveled like a hand withered by palsy.
The Earth reached up for her. She was now low enough to make out pieces of flotsam racing along in the river.
She told herself not to worry about her mysterious power having all but crumbled away, to concentrate instead on recalling or discovering what it did.
Unfortunately, strain as she might, she couldn’t remember anything about it. Nor could she analyze its properties merely by concentrating on the way it felt, lying dormant and crippled in her mind and body.
But perhaps analysis was the wrong approach. The power wasn’t a machine, some instrumentality separate from herself. It was a part of her, just like her limbs, and a person didn’t have to exercise conscious, methodical control over her legs to make them walk. She simply had to decide to move, and her nerves and muscles did the rest.
The falling woman did her best to stop thinking. Instead she tried to trust the power, to feel and accept it as an innate part of herself, and then to exert it as instinctively as she might reach out and pluck an apple from a tree.
For a second or two, nothing happened. Then, debilitated though it was, her gift stirred. She perceived the atmosphere around her almost as if it were solid and she were touching every molecule of it at once. She willed the air directly beneath her to blast upward in a steady stream forceful enough to arrest her descent.
Overtaxed, her power strained while her muscles ached and clenched in sympathy with the struggle. An updraft gusted too feebly to do her any good, faltered, then blew again, this time more powerfully. Ever so gradually, her fall slowed, until at last she was floating about fifty feet above the river, the folds of her black cape swelling with the wind that held her up.
Then, abruptly, her talent died like a candle burning out. She fell again.
She could tell that for the moment at least, the power was gone beyond recall. Acting on instinct once more, she arched her back and straightened her limbs, arranging her body for a dive.
She entered the water cleanly, perpendicular to its surface, and plunged deep into its lightless depths. Strangely, the cold, smothering blackness brought the worst surge of terror yet, as if she’d been buried alive. The fear now was even more intense than at the instant when she’d first realized she was falling.
Frantically she kicked and stroked upward. At last, she broke the surface, and the hysterical dread abated.
Treading water, she took stock of her situation. She was a long way from shore and already weary, but even so, she thought she had a chance to make it to safety. That was because she now remembered that she loved to swim and was good at it. In fact, though the rest of the past was still a blank, she clearly recalled a moment from her childhood: splashing about naked and alone in a lake under a tropical sun, while several oryx, long since grown accustomed to her presence, ambled down to the water to drink.
Her cape would hinder her movements, and her alloy bracelets, light though they were considering their bulk, would weigh her down, so she left them in the river. She considered pulling off her high, skintight boots as well, but they were made of something so light that she doubted they’d be a problem. Like a wetsuit, they might even help to stave off hypothermia.
She started swimming, essentially moving right along with the swollen, muddy river, but trying to maintain a slight diagonal that would, theoretically, carry her to shore. If she attempted to reach her destination any more directly, it would mean fighting the current, and its power, vastly strengthened by the runoff from the storm, would very likely overwhelm her.
The rain made a sizzling sound as it pounded the surface of the river. Waterlogged strands of her long white hair plastered themselves to her face. I should have kept the mohawk, she thought wryly, then realized she’d regained another memory.
Suddenly some sixth sense warned her she was in danger. Glancing back, she saw the black bulk of a barge, laden with a pyramid of logs and broken loose from its moorings, come scudding out of the darkness, bearing down on her as if some murderous pilot were steering it.
She tried to flounder out of its path, then saw that she wasn’t going to make it. Desperately she dove beneath the surface, allowing the barge to pass above her. In her still-muddled condition, it was only after she came up again that it occurred to her that she might conceivably have grabbed hold of the vessel and hauled herself aboard, and by that time it was already lost in the gloom.
Gradually a chill crept into her flesh, while her muscles grew numb with fatigue. She started to fear that she wouldn’t reach land after all. At the end, she was laboring so desperately simply to keep her head above water that she virtually lost her bearings. She was surprised when the current swept her through an open gate in a concrete levee and down a diversionary canal.
A steel ladder, bolted to the wall on her left, appeared in the gloom ahead. She fought to steer herself toward it with all her failing strength, and, her arm outstretched, just managed to grab it before the water could sweep her by.
She pulled herself onto the ladder and clung with all her might, like a frightened child clinging to her mother. She wasn’t sure she could climb it, but she knew she had to try. If she simply stayed where she was, submerged to the shoulders in the rushing water, she would only grow colder and weaker until the current finally tore her from her perch.
So she dragged herself upward, one painful, faltering step at a time, while below her, the spillway hissed as if angry at being cheated of its plaything. Finally she hauled herself over the top of the ladder and onto a sheet of tarmac, where she sprawled, gasping and shivering, on her belly.
Eventually, when her breathing eased a little, she heard voices to her left. Wiping wet hair from her eyes, she turned her head in that direction. Several yards away, four men in day-glow orange slickers and yellow hardhats were consulting a set of maps and documents sealed in plastic to protect them from the downpour.
The white-haired woman tried to call to them for help, but her first feeble cry was too faint for them to hear. She sucked in a breath to try again, and then another flash of memory made her hesitate.
She had enemies—powerful, cunning, merciless foes who would love to see her perish. She could even picture a few of them, albeit not clearly: a white-haired man wh
o generally wore a helmet, a creature who resembled a cross between a human being and a winged dinosaur, a pale man with metallic-looking skin. One of them might well have hurled her down from the sky. Until she remembered who she was and who they were, it would be reckless to trust anyone, particularly in her weakened condition. For the time being, she’d have to fend for herself.
She silently drew herself to her feet. The stealthy action felt familiar and accomplished, and she realized that whoever she was, she must have once trained hard to master the art of sneaking about undetected. Was she a hunter? Or a spy? Frustrated by her inability to recall, she tiptoed away from the oblivious men.
Lashed by the wind and rain, Rogue crouched beside a small satellite dish TV antenna mounted on the pitched, shingled roof of a two-story wooden house. She couldn’t remember how or why she’d come to land in that particular place. As near as she could determine, she was blacking out occasionally, a byproduct of her own personality battling for dominance with Helen Purvis’s inside her.
At least she hadn’t attacked anyone during the blackout, or at any rate she didn’t think so. If she had, surely she wouldn’t be so wracked with hunger now.
Below her, a door banged, voices sounded, and the front porch creaked. A heavyset man and a lanky teenage boy lumbered into view carrying a large television, wrapped in plastic and duct tape to protect it from the rain. They shoved it into the back of a battered blue Chevy pickup, then headed back inside, no doubt for more possessions too precious to abandon to a flood.
Despite the downpour, with her newly heightened senses, Rogue could smell the scent of the humans’ warm flesh marbled with its intricate network of arteries and veins, just as she could hear the thumping of their hearts. Even though it was no longer blood she craved, her awareness of the vital fluid pulsing through the mortals’ bodies still enflamed her hunger another notch. She clutched at the roof as if to anchor herself in place. Her fingertips shredded shingles and bit into the planks beneath.
Father and son disappeared back inside their home. Rogue resolved to flee before they returned. But as she rose into the air, a small woman struggled through the door, a pair of overstuffed, green plastic garbage bags in her arms. She’d cut holes in another such sack, then pulled it over her head to serve as a makeshift poncho.
Suddenly the hunger was in control. Indeed, Rogue only vaguely recalled that she’d ever had any qualms about indulging it. Leering, she landed in a crouch between the human and the truck.
The woman was in her thirties, with pink cheeks, a wide, full-lipped mouth, and a snub nose. Despite her improvised hood, raindrops had already spotted her wire-rim glasses. Startled, she gasped and lurched backward, still reflexively clutching her bundles.
It was always amusing to see terror in the face of the prey. Despite her hunger, Rogue decided to draw the moment out a little. Gliding forward, she tore open the garbage bags, partly to get their bulky contents out of her way, but mostly just for the fun of undoing the human’s work. Framed photos, diplomas, certificates, scrapbooks, a wedding album, and a huge
old family Bible all spilled out into the mud and standing water. The front cover of the Bible split away from the spine.
The mutant reached for her victim’s face, and then the mortal shrieked. Perhaps it was her cry that jolted Rogue back to some semblance of sanity. The X-Man wrenched her hands back, whirled, and staggered away, though denying her compulsion like this, at the last possible moment, brought a pang of frustration as excruciating as torture. “Get back inside!” she croaked.
The porch groaned, and the door banged. That at least put the mortal woman out of sight. But Rogue still couldn’t help thinking just how easy it would be to follow her inside. With her strength, she could smash down the door with a flick of her hand, then stalk through the house draining everyone, first the mother, then the father, then however many children there were.
No! She forced herself to fly up and away, leaving the helpless family far behind. She wondered if she should travel on to some remote location, perhaps the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, to distance herself from other people. But it took energy to defy gravity, and she was afraid that the more she expended, the more ungovernable the hunger would grow. Eventually, after some wandering, she settled atop a red brick winery, with muscadine grape vines growing on trellises on the hillside behind it. As far as she could tell, no one was currently on the premises, and the establishment was set well back from the street and away from other buildings, so it promised at least a measure of isolation.
The hunger welled up inside her, and she nearly sobbed. Lord, why is this happening? Stolen memories had overwhelmed her before, but the effect invariably faded over time. In contrast, the essence of Helen Purvis was growing steadily stronger.
Sometimes she perceived Helen as a distinct and separate entity inside her head, wrestling her for control, and that was
frightening and dangerous enough. But often the alien personality simply permeated her thoughts and feelings like silt suspended in water, and that was infinitely worse, because it was far more difficult to resist. At certain moments, it made it impossible to discern where she ended and the vampire began.
Vampire. She’d never met such a monster before—supernatural threats were by no means the X-Men’s specialty—but some of her teammates had, and Helen clearly matched the description. It was nauseating to think that Rogue had assimilated the persona of something not merely malevolent or even inhuman but dead. Given the predator’s nocturnal nature, the mutant had prayed that Helen and her murderous desires might fall asleep when dawn broke, but no such luck. The sun had surely risen by now, though, due to the rain clouds covering the sky, the world was nearly as gloomy as before. Yet the vampire’s spirit was as active as ever.
Rogue was all but certain that she’d been set up to absorb Helen’s essence. That was why her glove had burst into flame. It was as if someone had poisoned her with a toxin designed to kill not her body but her soul.
Overhead, thunder rumbled. The rain poured down. Off in the distance, their headlights gleaming and their tires splashing up water, cars jammed the major highways of the beleaguered city as people attempted to evacuate
For the tenth time, Rogue resolved to call the other X-Men for help. Her hand shaking, she fumbled the black plastic cylinder of her Global Comm-Stat Unit from an inner pocket of her jacket. Inside her, the part that was Helen crowed and capered in delight. The vampire wanted her to ran to her teammates, because, much as she hungered for the vitality of ordinary mortals, she craved the life force of superhumans even more.
How could Rogue subject her friends to such a danger? For that matter, how could she face them after what she’d already done to Ororo? Snarling in despair, she clenched her fist, pulverizing the apparatus in her grasp.
“Rogue,” someone whispered.
Startled, the mutant jerked around. No one else was on the roof. She wondered if Helen was speaking to her, and, in her muddled state, she’d mistaken the quasi-hallucination for a real sound.
“Rogue.” This time the voice was slightly louder. Loud enough for her to perceive it as deep, mellifluous, and masculine, and therefore probably not a manifestation of the malevolent spirit contaminating her own.
“Who are you?” the mutant asked. “Please go away. I’m dangerous.”
The newcomer chuckled. “Not to me, I promise.” Listening to him, Rogue suddenly felt a surge of elation, like a lost child sighting her mother, or a woman seeing the love of her life unexpectedly step from a crowd. She didn’t truly recognize the voice she was hearing, yet somehow she felt as if she did.
“Where are you?” she repeated.
“Directly in front of you. Well, not entirely, not in the flesh, but you’ll be able to see me if you gaze with the eyes of the spirit.”
Rogue peered as hard as she could, and eventually she did see him, a blurry, translucent image hanging in the air. His features seemed especially indistinct, as if mere mortals weren�
��t permitted to behold them in all their glory, but she could make out brown hair, a tall, imposing frame, archaic crimson clothing, a golden amulet and a wristband, and a long, heavy sword in a scabbard. His purple-lined cloak seemed to hang a bit unevenly, fuller on the left than the right, as if he had the arm on the latter side tucked behind his back.
“Who are you?” she breathed.
“A friend,” he replied, “come to help in your hour of need.”
Despite the hope that the figure in red inspired, Rogue’s eyes narrowed. “That answer’s a little short on detail.”
“I know,” replied the man with the sword. “But there are levels of reality where the inhabitants don’t use names, just as there are questions that don’t have simple answers.”
“Are you saying you’re an angel?” She realized she was jumping to conclusions, yet, the way the apparition made her feel, it was astonishingly easy to believe.
The caped man smiled. Rogue sensed it somehow, even though the apparition’s features were still veiled, and despite her distress, fleetingly smiled in return. ‘ ‘That, I suppose, is a question of perspective. Suffice it to say, I’ve been watching you for a long while. Don’t you sense that to be so?”
She did. The swordsman was a stranger, yet not. Somehow they shared a bond. ‘ ‘Can you cure me?”
“Yes. I can take away your pain. More than that, I can lead you to your destiny, a glorious culmination like no other since the advent of humanity. Your current state, noisome though it seems, has a higher purpose than torment. It will prepare you to remake the world.”
The phantasm’s words made Rogue feel proud and full of wonder. But they frustrated her as well, because she really didn’t understand them, though she felt that she should. If only she could clear the fog from her head! “What are you talking about? Tell me what you mean!”
The apparition sighed. “Once again, child, the explanation is long and involved, and as we dawdle here, your dark sister is enslaving you.” As if on cue, Rogue experienced a pang of hunger so keen that, shaking, she had to grit her teeth to hold in a moan. “Can’t you simply trust me?”
Soul Killer Page 3