Legends Read online

  LEGENDS

  Stan Lee, Editor

  Illustrations by Mike Zeck

  MARVEL®

  BP BOOKS, INC. NEW YORK

  BERKLEY BOULEVARD BOOKS, NEW YORK

  Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  Stan Lee

  EVERY TIME A BELL RINGS Brian K. Vaughan

  DIARY OF A FALSE MAN Keith R.A. DeCandido

  WELCOME TO THE X-MEN, MADROX

  Steve Lyons

  PEACE OFFERING

  Michael Stewart

  THE WORST PRISON OF ALL C.J. Henderson

  CHASING HAIRY Glenn Hauman

  ONE NIGHT ONLY

  Sholly Fisch

  A FINE LINE

  Dori Koogler

  STEEL DOGS AND ENGLISHMEN

  Thomas Deja

  THE STRANGER INSIDE Jennifer Heddle

  ONCE A THIEF Ashley McConnell

  ICE PRINCE K.A. Kindya

  SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS ARE MADE OF Robin Wayne Bailey

  CONTINUITY GUIDE CONTRIBUTORS

  Introduction

  Stan Lee

  Q§!

  Every Time a Bell Rings

  Brian K. Vaughan

  “It’s not the fall that kills you ... it’s the landing.” Is that how the old joke goes? Weird, I had always heard that your life flashes before your eyes right before you die. As I fell thousands of feet from the midnight sky to my rapidly approaching death below, the only thing I could think about were bad puns I heard in first grade and the way that year’s teacher, Mrs. Chin-char, smelled like strawberries and Elmer’s glue.

  My name is Warren Worthington III (Dad forces me use the embarrassing “third”), and I can fly. That’s right, fly. Not metaphorically, mind you. Or with the assistance of some kind of aircraft. Nope, I can fly.

  I know a lot of people would give anything for this ability, but trust me, looking back at idiotically practicing my first high-altitude barrel role at the tender age of fifteen (with the vast wisdom that comes with now being sixteen), I realize that flying just makes life hell.

  The problems began a few years ago when I noticed two small lumps on my back, just below my shoulders. Eventually a couple of, and I swear this is true, feathers pierced through my skin. At first, they were just an itchy annoyance, but over time, they grew. By the time I was fourteen, I had full-blown, soft, white plumage and a twelve-foot wingspan.

  Thankfully they were incredibly flexible, so I could hide them somewhat comfortably underneath a normal dress shirt using one of my father’s large leather belts bound around my chest to hold them down.

  I know, I know. Why bother hiding them? Why not show everyone my amazing “gift”? Well, sorry, but I had no interest in joining a carnival sideshow or becoming some sort of religious icon. Having come from a long line of men and women who had always valued sameness (see: Warren Worthington and Warren Worthington Jr.), I knew that most people fear and hate the things that make us different.

  Besides, sprouting new appendages was a lot more terrifying than I probably made it out to be. I mean, I know that puberty isn’t easy for any kid, but molting wasn’t exactly something they covered in health class. Lots of kids refuse to take group showers, but I somehow suspect

  that my reasons for doing so were a tad more unique than the rest of the guys in gym class, you know?

  I was so confused by the things that it was another year before I even considered that maybe they were actually functional. After several experimental jumps off of staircases, I gradually worked my way up to the roof of Worthington Manor and, eventually, to the huge oak in our backyard. For just a second, after stepping off that old tree’s tallest branch and gliding under the moonlight, all of the hardship that my wings had brought me almost seemed worthwhile.

  Almost.

  Anyway, none of this was going to matter in ten seconds or so, as I was about to become a feathered pancake on the soccer field that belongs to St. Ignatius, the exclusive all-boys preparatory school I still attend (in the grand tradition of all Worthington men). As I struggled to keep my eyes open against the whipping wind, I thought of my mother and how proud she was when I got accepted. I thought about how she looked when she wore her hair down for sad occasions, and tried to imagine which black dress she would put on for my funeral.

  And I suddenly realized that I wasn’t going to die that day.

  Pull it together, Warren! My own cruel inner voice sounded like my father’s familiar screaming, and the sudden shock of recognition that came with the memory snapped me to attention.

  Yaw, roll and. . . Come on . . .

  Flying is a lot harder that you would imagine. Birds don’t have to read countless books on Bernoulli’s principles of air pressure; but then again, birds were designed to fly. Teenage boys weren’t. We’re heavy, awkward, and like Icarus (I had a mythology paper due on Mr. Thomas’s desk the next day), I assumed that we all paid for our arrogance in the end.

  Yaw, roll and. . .

  Inches away from kissing the ill-kept sports field, I kicked out my legs, hugged the tiniest current hidden in the still air, and forced all twelve feet of my limp wings open and taut.

  Pitch!

  Narrowly missing slamming into one of the soccer field’s rusty goal boxes, I banked up hard and slowed to a stop, clumsily somersaulting onto the hard earth. Digging my fingers into the warm, wonderful soil, I collapsed in exhaustion and promptly vomited up that evening’s chicken-fried steak.

  See what I mean about flying?

  By the dim light of the moon, I did my best to clean up, and carefully bound my wings together. Replacing my uniform shirt, I noticed the large stack of Wright brothers biographies and books on barometric pressure I had brought with me to the field.

  I kicked them as hard as I could, destroying their fragile bindings. Loose pages wafted to the earth more gently that I ever could.

  I felt ridiculous. I was no good at flying and I clearly wasn’t meant to do it. I didn’t want to do it. Right then and there, I made a solemn vow to visit the school nurse the very next morning to ask how the stupid growths could be removed before—

  “Hey, War’!” a voice cried from the darkness. “Warren? Warren!” Suddenly, a squat figure appeared. It was Benny Yorkes, my roommate, lab partner and best friend. With large, wide teeth that looked like Scrabble pieces, predictably thick-rimmed glasses, and a constellation of acne covering his face, Benny knew what it was like to be a social outcast much more than my tall, blond, rich, traditionally handsome self ever could. I was closer to him than I had ever been to any other human being in the world.

  “God, I’ve been searching all over for you, Warren!” Benny said, looking even worse than usual. He was sweating, shaking.

  “Slow down, Benny. What’s going on?”

  “It’s Sullivan. He’s dead.”

  “What?”

  I had no idea how to react to this. Dan Sullivan was a bright kid with a big, dopey smile and a penchant for causing trouble, whether it was letting ferrets loose in the halls of our sister school or sealing Headmaster White’s car doors shut with a new polymer bond he made in science class. He wasn’t a friend, barely an acquaintance really, but Sullivan was still my classmate. My eighty-four-year-old Grandpa’s passing had been a shock, but the death of a fellow fifteen-year-old seemed ... unreal, I guess.

  “They . . . they said he was murdered, War’. Somebody killed him.” “Who? Who would—”

  “I don’t know, but when I went back to the room to tell you, you weren’t there, and I thought that, I thought.. ”

  Suddenly, Benny grabbed my hands.

  Slowly, I raised my hand and patted him reassuringly. “I’m fine, Benny. I’m fine.”

  We awkwardly pulled ourselves apart as Benny stammered, “The priests are c
hecking up on the rest of us to make sure we’re okay. They think whoever killed Sullivan might still be out here. We have to get back to the dorm right now!”

  Hastily picking up what remained of my tattered aviation books, I said, “Sure. Of course. I—”

  Impatient, Benny knelt down to help me collect my belongings, looking at the texts with confusion. “What are you, studying to be a pilot or something?”

  “No, Benny. If God had wanted us to fly . . .”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come on, let’s get out of here!”

  Dismembered flight books in hand, Benny Yorkes and I ran through the darkness, thinking of our fallen classmate.

  High above the funeral of Daniel T. Sullivan, blackbirds circled. They didn’t seem disrespectful, but they didn’t seem reverent either, really. They just circled.

  It wasn’t raining like it always does at funerals in movies. Thick off-white clouds hung low in the sky, sunlight occasionally breaking through their ragged edges.

  Mrs. Sullivan wasn’t crying, but Mr. Sullivan was. This surprised me, I suppose. My parents sent their condolences to the family, unable to make it out to St. Ignatius for the funeral because of “pressing business concerns.”

  “I heard they had to have a closed casket because he was . . . torn open and, and, gutted. Could that be true, War’?” Benny whispered while squirming in his ill-fitting maroon blazer. The two of us stood together at the very back of the sea of identical brownish-red jackets.

  “Don’t know. Nobody’s saying anything about the actual murder.” “Well, who do you think did it?”

  “I don’t know, Benny. Some psychopath, probably.”

  “I think it was someone here,” he said nervously, “I bet someone from the school killed him.”

  “Like who, Ben?”

  “Him,” he muttered, subtly pointing to Hallahan, our resident spooky groundskeeper (trust me, every private school has one). A veteran of the war, Hallahan was a victim of mustard gas, an attack that left him without tear ducts. Every few seconds, he had to lick his thumb and eerily drag it across his eyeballs.

  “Well... I wouldn’t want to be caught in a room alone with him, but that doesn’t mean Hallahan is a murderer.”

  “He’s the one who found the body. Said that he thinks he saw some kind of ‘animal’ attacking Sullivan. Pretty convenient, huh? Look at him! That creepshow’s not going to be shedding any tears for Sullivan, that’s for sure.”

  As the funeral drew to a close and Daniel’s parents departed arm in arm, Father White, the stem headmaster of St. Ignatius and Sullivan’s archenemy, gathered us together in a small circle. The priest’s thick, black eyebrows danced wildly underneath his incompatible white hair as he lectured us loudly, “Boys, a great evil has visited St. Ignatius . .

  Benny looked at me and rolled his eyes.

  “As you all know,” White continued, softly now, “Mr. Sullivan was a very . . . troubled child. Satan held a powerful influence over him. He was not strong enough to fight for his own salvation, and in the end, he paid for his moral cowardice with his life. Pray for guidance, boys. Pray for salvation, lest such a fate befall you!”

  The headmaster looked directly at Benny and me. “That is all.” Shocked but not surprised by his typically callous words, we slowly disassembled and headed for the dorms. Confidently, I turned to Benny and asked, “You know what I’m thinking, right?”

  “Yep. White killed him.”

  “If he didn’t, I don’t know who did. I mean, he—”

  Suddenly, Benny put out his arm and stopped me in my tracks. He pointed to a dying willow tree on the outskirts of the school’s property. Sitting in its shade and smoking was one Chadwick von Stroheim, an antisocial new transfer student who loved to terrorize the younger boys. Spotting us, the hulking teenager shot an icy stare while casually blowing a geometrically perfect smoke ring.

  Slowly, Benny and I turned to each other and nodded, silently acknowledging that this odd character was certainly responsible for the murder of Danny Sullivan.

  ' ^ ^ ^

  “So, am I ever going to get back those aviation books I lent you, Mr. Worthington?” Father Timothy Ober asked with a knowing grin.

  Ober (Father Tim to his older students) was St. Ignatius’s impossibly thin biology professor and fencing instructor. The youngest of Ignatius’s staff, this broomstick of a man was also the most approachable.

  “Of course, Father,” I said guiltily. “I’ll, uh, have them back to you soon.”

  “No hurry, son. Making any headway on that science experiment of yours?”

  “Some,” I mumbled, slumping into one of the many identical desks in the vast science lab. I liked the way all of the perfectly arranged, unoccupied chairs looked in the mostly empty room. Calm, I guess.

  Father Tim sat on the edge of an experiments table and slowly took off his glasses, his stock response for concern. “‘What’s the matter, Warren? Is it Daniel? His ... his death has been hard on all of us, you know. I was very close to him, too. He was a ... a wonderful student.” “Sure,” I said, tracing my finger thoughtlessly around the initials carved into the desk by students long since graduated. “But, to be honest, that’s not what’s really been bothering me.”

  “No?” * '

  “No. Father, do you know anything about... I don’t know quite how to phrase this. Do you know anything about people who are . .. different?”

  He tapped one end of his folded glasses against his brow, closed his eyes and nodded. Choosing his words slowly and deliberately, he finally offered, “Warren, I think I’ve heard this line of questioning more times than you could imagine. Let me remind you that you are free to tell me absolutely anything in the very strictest of confidence.”

  “Do you know anything about people bom with something . . . strange?”

  Surprised, he instantly replaced his glasses and stared at me with confusion. “Strange? Why, you mean, birth defects or—”

  “Not necessarily strange. Maybe I mean . . . extra.”

  “Ah,” Father Tim exclaimed, leaping from the table and racing for his bookshelf. “Extra!”

  Off of the top shelf, he grabbed a large hardbound book and cracked it open before me, saying, “I’ve been reading the most fascinating thesis by a brilliant geneticist named Charles ..He flipped the book over, searching for the author. “Xavier, that’s it! He has pioneered remarkable research in just the kind of mutations I think you may be concerned about.”

  He looked at the heavy text for a moment before finally handing it to me, cautiously adding, “It’s heady stuff, Warren. Try not to drown in it, now.”

  Graciously, I took the thesis, collected my blazer and backpack and headed for the door with, “Thank you, Father Tim. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”

  “Certainly, Mr. Worthington,” he smiled. “Try to return this one before the end of the next millennium, eh?”

  Inspired with the newfound hope of potential “normalcy” after reading Xavier’s thesis, I decided to return to the soccer field that very evening to further explore what the author had referred to as my “mutant ability.” Waiting for Benny to finally begin his predictable snoring pattern, I quietly climbed out of our first-floor window and charged across St. Ignatius’s immense property.

  Suddenly noticing a single, glowing orange dot emanating from underneath the school’s ancient willow tree, I stopped dead in my tracks.

  “Chadwick,” I said, watching the notorious bully calmly puff on his cigarette. “What are you doing out at this hour?”

  “Just catching a smoke, Worthington.” He exhaled. “Though I might ask the same of you.”

  I racked my brain for any plausible excuse at all, but before I could dream up an appropriate story, the overgrown transfer student flicked the flaming remnants of his cigarette in a blazing arc ending at my feet, and quietly walked away.

  Standing there for some time, I watched Chadwick until he eventually disappeared in the campus’ shadows. I
tried to picture him ripping Danny Sullivan to pieces, but seeing those images in my head felt wrong. I sprinted for the soccer field, opening my mouth wide and letting the cold night air pour into me.

  Inches from my makeshift “runway” at the soccer field, I heard the most terrible sound you could imagine.

  I had seen the word bloodcurdling used in horror stories before, but it meant absolutely nothing to me until I listened to the shrill wail coming from the groundskeeper’s quarters down by our football field.

  Benny was right. Hallahan was the killer, and while I stood there motionless, he was probably taking the life of another student. I could have run for help, but I knew the deed would be finished by the time I made it back to the dorms. I like to think that it was bravery that drove me to run for Hallahan’s quarters on my own, but it was probably just selfishness.

  After Sullivan’s, I never wanted to attend a classmate’s funeral again.

  Racing for the groundskeeper’s small cabin, I found his front door open. Upon closer inspection, I learned that the door wasn’t open, it was missing, tom from its hinges and casually discarded outside.

  “Who’s here? I... I heard screams!” Every heartbeat made my hands shake.

  I fumbled in the darkness for a light switch. Finding it, I immediately wished I hadn’t. Hard yellow light spilled out of a hanging overhead lamp. The swinging spotlight alternately revealed and concealed the lifeless body of Hallahan, still clutching the pair of gardening shears he unsuccessfully used to fend off his attacker.

  His eyes were missing. The empty sockets were filled with shallow puddles of blood that rippled slightly as I cautiously stepped closer. The elderly man’s body had been ripped open vertically along the ventral portion of the body (I think it was ventral anyway, we had done the same to fetal pigs the previous semester). The cuts were jagged, uneven, as if the claws of some wild animal had made them. I tried to vomit, but my body could only muster up dry, painful hacking.

  Suddenly, I heard a noise amidst the silence. Heavy. Rhythmic. By the time I recognized it as breathing, it was right behind me.

  With a deafening roar, the creature was on top of me. It was as large as a bear, though it clearly wasn’t one. The bulk of its weight rested on its large, muscular hind legs. The beast had my shoulders pinned to the ground with rugged talons. This time, a childhood memory I had forgotten years ago, accidentally swimming into the forbidden deep end of our family pool, suddenly popped vividly into my head. Strange.