Soul Killer Read online

  Chapter 1

  Helen Purvis wanted to feed. The thirst seared her throat and kindled a fever in her mind. She studied her brothers and sisters, a dozen lean, pale shadows gliding restlessly about the nave of the derelict church, and saw that many of them were hungry as well. Their need was manifest in the crimson light that flickered in their eyes and in the way they bickered, snarled, and hissed at one another. Evidently the psychic summons had taken the entire coven by surprise, whereupon everyone had rushed to the gathering place without delay.

  “And of course, now that we have, he leaves us cooling our heels for hours,” said Carla Spelvin. “Typical.” She was a lithe, lovely brunette with big green eyes, a former model who had no doubt been irresistible to men even before her transformation added to her allure. With her stooped, angular figure, lank, mousy hair, and pinched, sallow face, Helen had envied such beauties in her previous existence. But her own empowerment had rendered such feelings absurd, as irrelevant to the creature she’d become as her boring secretarial job, her cramped efficiency apartment, or her pet Siamese cat and only friend, named Mel Gibson, whom she’d tom apart to celebrate her metamorphosis.

  She hoped to stalk and kill the human Mel Gibson someday. It seemed as if it would be a lot of fun.

  She wasn’t particularly surprised that Carla had seemingly read her thoughts. Beings like themselves perceived all manner of things that were hidden from mere mortals. “Absolutely typical,” Helen agreed. “Another way of reminding us who’s boss.” She grinned, exposing her aching fangs, which kept trying to lengthen of their own accord. “I suppose that if we

  wanted to show him that he can’t treat us so cavalierly, we could leave and go hunting.”

  Carla laughed. “Good idea,” she said, “except that I like my skeleton where it is. Gordon certainly didn’t seem very happy without his. So I’m afraid—” Her head pivoted toward the front of the church. “Hey, he’s here!’’ Helen turned.

  The grimy stained-glass windows at the rear of the apse still depicted scenes from the life of Christ, but the coven, acting under their master’s direction, had replaced the rest of the sacred imagery in the area with abominations. A reeking, maggot-infested corpse drooped from the big oak cross, which now hung upside down. Monstrous marble statues—scaly, tentacular figures so convoluted and alien that it hurt the eye simply to look at them—flanked the new altar, a massive basalt block carved with hieroglyphs and encrusted with the dried blood of human sacrifices.

  Behind the altar stood the master, a figure as unholy as the furnishings, for he looked like the devil incarnate. A tall man in a scarlet tunic and cloak, he had reddish skin, stubby horns, pointed ears, talons, and a tail. A long, straight sword with a golden hilt hung at his hip. Even from thirty feet away, Helen could feel the dark magic crawling in the blade.

  But despite the master’s infernal appearance, he smelled of human flesh, sweat, and blood, and one could hear the heart thumping away in his breast. Such telltale signs of life were one of the reasons that the coven had initially refused to serve him, obliging him to break them to his will. Afterwards, of course, they’d come to adore him for his power and his cruelties, though it was a tainted worship laced with envy and resentment. Such was the perverse devotion with which members of their kind generally regarded their lords, a feeling not entirely unlike the masochistic emotional bondage they sometimes imposed on their prey.

  Despite the keenness of their senses, none of the sorcerer’s minions ever saw him come or go. Helen wondered just how long he’d been standing in the front of the church, and if, perchance, he’d overheard Carla and herself discussing him with less than utter reverence. His black eyes gazed directly at her, and he gave her a sardonic smile. Despite herself, she trembled.

  But he didn’t command her forward for punishment. Instead, he scrutinized the members of the coven for another moment, then intoned, “Tell me of the world.”

  “The world is broken,” Helen said in chorus with her fellows. The master had taught them this simple litany on the very night they’d surrendered to him.

  “Why is it broken?” asked the sorcerer.

  “The gods are in prison.”

  “Who will free them?”

  “We will:”

  “Who will free them?”

  “We will!”

  “ Who will free them?”

  “We will!”

  “Yes,” the red-clad sorcerer said, his heavy golden wristband gleaming as he gestured, “we will indeed, and then the Dark Ones will reshape the Earth into the place that it was always meant to be. A world scoured clean of puling, craven morality. A realm where only strength and cunning matter. A paradise where the predators reign supreme, free to slake every craving and indulge every whim. A planet where you and I will be as demigods. We will stand above all others in the Elder Gods’ favor, for the sake of their liberation. A liberation we are now ready to effect. It begins tonight, and will come to pass in a matter of days.”

  Helen gaped up at him in astonishment. The rest of the coven seemed just as surprised.

  The homed man sneered at their reaction. “Why are you so amazed? I told you this night would come, and come soon. Did you think me akin to some pathetic mortal evangelist, prattling about apocalypses and days of judgment that never arrive? Rest assured, I am neither deluded nor a charlatan, and all that I tell you is true. The Dark Ones are real. I’ve walked with them in the dimension of their exile. It was magic that trapped them there, cast by a being not fundamentally different than myself. What one sorcerer weaves, another can unravel, provided he grasps the trick of it—and after seven hundred years of study, I finally do.” He stared down at his minions. “Do you believe me?”

  “Yes,” Helen breathed. After all the ghastly miracles she’d seen him work, she did believe that he could change the face of the world. The prospect was exhilarating and terrifying in equal measure.

  “It is well that you believe,” the master said. “Your faith will be rewarded, just as apostasy would bring a swift and dire punishment. Now, two of you have a special role to play in the struggle to come. Helen and Carla, come to me.”

  Helen jumped in surprise. Hitherto, the homed man had never so much as hinted that he regarded her as anything more than just another servant. Carla looked just as startled. But neither dared question the magician’s command. They rose from their pew and headed down the aisle.

  Though they strode briskly, scarcely daring to do otherwise, the short walk seemed to take a long time, like an action in a dream. In passing, Helen noticed the faces of her siblings. Some looked relieved that the master hadn’t called for them; others, jealous at being passed over; and one or two, those who had lost their mortality most recently, betrayed a hint of pity. Mostly, however, she was conscious of the sorcerer’s fierce gaze.

  Helen and Carla would have stopped beneath the altar, but the master motioned for them to ascend the steps to the dais and stand beside him. “Behold the anointed ones,” he said to the rest of the coven, “the chosen instruments of the gods.”

  He looked into the women’s faces. “Are you afraid, my daughters?”

  “No,” Carla said. Helen was certain she was lying.

  “Yes,” Helen said, “but I trust you, Master—” that was almost true “—and I want to live in the world you promised, I want to be a demigod. I want more power. Power is the only thing that’s ever done me any good.”

  The sorcerer smiled. ‘ ‘Well said, both of you. It pleases me that your resolve is strong, for your paths will not be easy. You will suffer, see your very natures altered, and very likely perish.” A cold thrill of fear sang along Helen’s nerves. “But you have experienced all these things before, only to rise in glory, and I swear by the Dark Ones that yo
u will rise again. The gods will resurrect you in the world to come. A future that the slaves who serve our pleasure will curse as Hell on Earth, but which will be an Eden for creatures such as ourselves. Now kneel.”

  The women obeyed. The hardwood floor, filthy with dirt, mouse droppings, and spatters of dried blood, felt cold and hard beneath Helen’s knees. The stench of the crucified corpse filled her nose and made her feel lightheaded.

  The master drew his sword, the metal whispering as it emerged from the scabbard. There were runes graven just below the guard, and the razor-sharp blade shone with a sickly phosphorescence. “The Elder Gods themselves forged this weapon,” the horned man said. “Worship it,” He extended it to Helen, and, after a moment’s hesitation, she pressed her lips against the steel.

  The sword was icy cold, and its touch sent a shock of nausea and revulsion through Helen’s body. Nevertheless, she managed not to recoil. The sorcerer then presented the weapon to Carla, who did just as good a job of masking her own repugnance.

  The master gave a slight nod, as if his acolytes had just passed a test. “Rise,” he said, and when they’d obeyed: “Helen, you will be first. Lie on the altar.”

  Once again feeling lost in a dream, Helen reclined on the bloodstained basalt. “Fix this moment in your memory,” the master told her. “This is the beginning of our triumph.” He lowered his voice, like a lover confiding a secret. “And just to make it all the sweeter, it is my greatest enemies who will furnish the key.”

  Helen experienced another jolt of fear, one that had nothing to do with the prospect of her own mysterious transformation or the advent of a new world she couldn’t truly comprehend. “Do you mean—?”

  The sorcerer shook his head. ‘ ‘No, little she-wolf, not him. Not the being whom you feel that you betrayed. I was referring to a band of self-styled heroes. Mortal fools, but formidable all the same. But this time. I’m ready for them. This time, they’re going to play my game.” He swung the sword above his head. “Brace yourself.”

  The blade plunged down, the point driving completely through her torso and pinning her to the stone. She screamed in agony.

  Ramparts of cumulonimbus cloud covered the night sky, masking any hint of dawn. Rain pounded steadily on the broad expanse of river far below, threatening to overwhelm the complex system of levees and spillways designed to protect the city beside it from harm. On the ground, engineers and crews of emergency workers were no doubt laboring desperately to buttress these defenses, but the X-Man called Storm knew that it would be only a matter of time until the Mississippi broke its bonds to flood Natchez and all points south.

  Unless, of course, she could prevent it.

  A willowy African-American woman with luminous blue eyes and a magnificent mane of long white hair, Ororo Munroe— who used the appropriate sobriquet of Storm—floated between the river and the clouds, the folds of her silver-gray cape billowing in the wind that bore her up. Frowning, she studied the turbulent air overhead with a sense that was not exactly sight. It was simply an aspect of her own gift, the power to command the forces of wind, precipitation, and lightning. She was bom with this talent; it set her, and her fellow X-Men, apart from the baseline of Homo sapiens. Ororo was a mutant.

  Today, however, her gift seemed to be failing her. She wasn’t having much success against this particular storm. And now she sensed an updraft spinning counterclockwise about half a mile away, twisting itself around the zone of low pressure at its core.

  The mutant wished she could simply ignore the isolated event and keep working on breaking up the entire system. But if she did, the whirling updraft was likely to turn into a tornado, a phenomenon just as potentially deadly as the impending flood. So she flew closer to the vortex, then willed it to dissolve. Gradually the spiral began to disperse.

  Rogue flew to her side. Storm’s teammate was an athletic-iooking young woman clad in a green-and-yellow formfitting uniform and a brown leather jacket. Her face was as lovely as Storm’s but in an entirely different style. The saucy curve of her lips, the pugnacious set of her jaw, and the glint in her emerald eyes suggested a rebellious, impulsive, and hot-tempered personality, while the windrider’s features bespoke a nature that was ordinarily gentle and serene. The two friends were a study in contrasts, and rarely more so than now.

  Rogue was too nearly invulnerable to feel much discomfort from the lashing of the wind and rain. But she didn’t have Storm’s weather-working powers to keep her warm and dry. Her brown, white-streaked hair was thoroughly soaked and tangled, inviting, her beauty notwithstanding, the customary comparison to a drowned rat.

  “How’s it goin’, ’Roro?” she asked in her sultry Southern accent.

  “Not well,” the other mutant replied, still concentrating on dispersing the last of the vortex. “I’ve tried blowing the clouds out to sea and making air rise from the land—rain can’t fall if you have a strong enough updraft. Warming the clouds so they could retain more moisture. Disrupting the static charges inside them to retard the formation of condensation nuclei.” It still felt a bit odd to explain feats in the language of science that she’d always understood and performed wordlessly, instinctively, but it was the only way to communicate them. “So far, none of it has helped. I admit, I’ve had difficulty affecting major weather systems before, just because the forces involved are so huge. But this is different. It’s like some power is actively opposing me, countering whatever I attempt.”

  “Do you think you’ll be able to prevent a flood?” asked Rogue, a hint of worry in her voice. She’d grown up in Mississippi. That was very likely why she’d insisted that she be the one to accompany Storm on the mission, not that anyone had argued. The fact that she too could fly made her a logical choice.

  “I don’t know,” said Ororo. She saw the embryonic tornado dissipate, and knew a pang of satisfaction. That was one small battle won, anyway. “With the Goddess’s help, I’ll do my best.”

  “I know you will,” Rogue said. She smiled crookedly. “Don’t you wish we were on vacation right now? I still think Bobby rigged it when we cut the cards to see who had to stick around.”

  Mere days before, a harrowing odyssey through time in the company of their sometime ally Spider-Man had left the X-Men thoroughly exhausted. Accordingly, Professor Charles Xavier, the founder and leader of the mutant super hero team as well as the world’s more powerful telepath, had decided that the group would stand down so that the team could take some sorely needed R&R.

  But the X-Men were the world’s first line of defense against those representatives of homo sapiens superior who chose to use their talents for sinister purposes, as well as the primary protectors of any peaceful mutants endangered by the xenophobia of ordinary humanity. Their responsibilities were too important for them ever to stand down completely, and thus a skeleton crew comprised of Ororo, Rogue, and Scott Summers and Jean Grey—the senior X-Men codenamed Cyclops and Phoenix—had been chosen to stay in residence at their headquarters in Salem Center, New York. Everyone else was either about to depart or had gone already.

  The four hangers-on had hoped that their duties would be limited to monitoring the world situation, maintaining equipment, and updating files, but it wasn’t to be. Not for Storm, anyway, not once she’d sensed a wrongness in the weather hundreds of miles to the southwest. The disturbance grated on her like a persistent toothache, or the roar of a jackhammer clattering on and on. She’d yearned to make the nagging sensation stop.

  Using Professor X’s state-of-the-art communications system to access the National Weather Service, she’d discovered that meteorologists the world over were nearly as dismayed as she was, albeit on a less visceral level. Despite the preexisting pattern of warm and cold fronts which should have precluded such a buildup, cumulus clouds from across the continent were converging on Natchez, as if a colossal, invisible hand were reaching out and gathering them in to create a torrential downpour.

  Ororo had immediately resolved to go to the site of the
storm, to determine the cause if possible and in any case to prevent a flood which might otherwise claim hundreds or even thousands of lives. And as she’d pretty much expected, her comrades had insisted that at least one of them tag along. Not that any of the other X-Men could help her influence the weather, but there was at least a theoretical possibility that some supercriminal or outlaw scientist was responsible for the impending calamity, and they wanted her to have backup in case any such malefactor appeared.

  I wish somebody would come out and fight, Storm thought sourly. Capturing a flesh-and-blood enemy and shutting down his or her rain-making gadget would almost certainly be easier than her current struggle. She drew more electricity forth from a towering jumble of clouds. The discharge blazed across the sky.

  Helen rose into the air. It felt odd to fly simply by willing it, rather than by beating leathery wings. But the master hadn’t wanted the mutants to divine prematurely what manner of creature she truly was, and so he’d bestowed upon her the power to fly in human form.

  But that change was trivial compared to the transformation yet to come. She wondered if the entity who was about to spring into existence would still be, in any true sense, herself, or if she was about to commit a particularly bizarre form of suicide. The latter possibility made her shiver as the pounding rain and the howling wind could not, but she told herself to trust in the sorcerer’s promises.

  After ascending for half a minute, she spotted two women floating in the air. The one in the cape and thigh-high boots gestured, and lighting burned across the sky.

  So these were the X-Men. Super heroes or super terrorists, depending on whom one believed. Like everyone else, Helen had heard of such people, but never expected to see one. They hadn’t seemed to have anything to do with her world of blood-thirst and endless night.

  Now that she’d found them, she suddenly felt a hunter’s urge to pounce. But at the moment, they were drifting within a few feet of one another, and if they were as powerful as the master claimed, it would be prudent to wait at least a little while in the hope that they’d move farther apart. The sorcerer had also told her that Storm and Rogue’s eyes were no keener than those of ordinary humans, and so, confident that the two mortals were unlikely to notice her lurking in the darkness, she hovered and watched.