Logan grinned. “Like they say, Red, you oughtta see the other guys. After you helped Rogue kick the Dark Ones out of her head, Kurt and Piotr stuck a sword through Belasco and lit him on fire. Then, when Dracula turned on us, Amanda teleported him to the other side of the world, where the sun’s shining, and of course that torched him too. We’ve had ourselves a regular supernatural barbecue.”
“You all right, Jean?” asked Rogue.
“I’m fine,” Phoenix replied. “Just tired and sore. Like everyone else is, I’m sure.”
“Thank God,” Rogue said, blinking back tears. “I’ll never forget what you did for me.” She looked around at the others. “All of you.”
“It’s part of the package,” said Wolverine. “You’ve saved our butts plenty of times.”
“But you did it for me after I nearly murdered one of our own,” said Rogue. She turned to Ororo. “Can you ever forgive me?”
The windrider smiled. “As if you even need to ask.” “We’ll rest for another ten minutes,” said Scott, “then retrieve Laurel’s car and head back to the Blackbird and the Cessna. We can radio Major Jones to tell her the crisis is over after we’re in the air. The shape we’re in, I don’t want to give her a second chance to take us into custody.”
“When the dust settles,” said Kurt, his yellow eyes gleaming, “do you think anyone will believe that the entire world was actually in danger, or that the X-Men saved the day?” “The Professor might be disappointed in me for saying this,” Cyclops answered, “but right now, I couldn’t care less. I just want to go home.”
Logan had noticed that, even though Piotr had watched over the unconscious Jean as anxiously as his teammates, he had nonetheless sat a little apart, on the one of the few pews that the battle hadn’t shattered. He was still there now, his body made of ordinary flesh once more, his broken leg immobilized by an improvised splint, and a pensive, troubled expression on his wide, square-jawed, handsome face.
His half-healed cuts and bruises twinging, Wolverine hobbled over to the Russian. “How do you like the taste of revenge?” the short man asked.
Piotr smiled ruefully. “I was ... ecstatic to throw the sword through Belasco. I suppose I still am happy I did it. But I don’t like the person I became tonight, eaten up with rage and hate. I’m ashamed of that man, and I don’t want to turn into him ever again.”
Logan extracted the pack of cheroots from his belt, ‘ ‘From your expression, I had a hunch you were worryin’ about something like that. If I were you, I wouldn’t sweat it. Take it from a guy with a real talent for ‘rage and hate,’ you ain’t the type. Now that you’ve gotten even with Belasco for hurting Illy ana, you’ll go back to bein’ your old self, helping old ladies across the street and painting your pictures, so decent and sensitive that it makes the rest of us want to puke,”
Colossus chuckled. “I hope so. At any rate, at least I now feel as if I belong among the X-Men. Ever since I abandoned you to join Magneto, I’ve worried that I could never truly be welcome again.”
Logan snorted. “Told you you’d switch back to normal. Already you’re talkin’ like a simp.”
Both men shared a welcome laugh at that.
Kurt took Amanda by the hand and led her away from the others, into a shadowy comer of the dilapidated church. It could be terrifying to go into deadly peril alongside the love of his life, but occasionally there were compensations as well. He could begin celebrating his victories immediately.
Nightcrawler kissed the Gypsy passionately. Exhilaration sang along his nerves. When at last they paused for breath, he whispered, !T knew you could do your part to stop Belasco. Without accepting Dracula’s tainted gift.”
“Were you really sure?” she murmured back. “Or were you simply hoping?”
The mutant opened his mouth to answer glibly, then sensing that she genuinely wished to know, responded with the truth instead. “To be honest,” he said, “over the course of the last several hours, I’ve had my doubts about a great many things. Which isn’t like me. But there were aspects of this mission that made me fear that we all might be flawed and inadequate to the challenge, myself most of all.”
“I know what you mean,” Amanda said. “I think that at certain moments everybody felt that way, even Wolverine. It seemed as if Belasco and Dracula were so powerful and clever, so far ahead of us every step of the way, that they could manipulate us like pawns on a chessboard.” She smiled. “But
I don’t imagine anyone feels that anymore.”
“You can rest assured, I don’t. I feel like Errol Flynn. Invincible and amorous.” He pressed his lips to hers.
A few seconds later, she jumped and squealed. “Watch the tail!” she said, giving his chest a playful slap. “At least until we’re really alone.”
Scott was still weary and aching right down to his bones, and was sure that everyone else felt the same. But the sooner they all got safely out of Natchez, and availed themselves of the medical resources in the mansion, the better off they’d be. Holding Jean’s hands, smiling into her bruised and scraped but still lovely features, he asked her, Ready?
More or less, she replied.
With a grunt, slightly surprised at just how quickly he was stiffening up, he rose from their fragment of broken pew, then helped her up and put his arm around her. “Time to go, people!” he called.
The X-Men headed for the vestibule. Her shoulder bandaged, Kitty walked with the black-pointed spear as if it were a staff, the butt thumping on the floor. Piotr limped along with one arm draped over Rogue’s shoulders and the other encircling Nightcrawler’s.
Suddenly Ororo stopped in her tracks. “Look at that!”
“What?” demanded Shadowcat, pivoting and peering about, searching for some new threat.
“The weather,” said Storm, beaming and gesturing at the open doors. “The rain’s stopping. There isn’t going to be a flood.”
As they all stepped out under the open sky, Scott saw that she was unquestionably correct. The masses of thunderheads were breaking up, revealing the beginnings of a pink and golden dawn.
Logan exhaled a plume of pungent smoke. “Looks like it could turn out to be a pretty day,” he said.
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