Sanctuary (16 page)

"You're faster than you look, lady," he growled low. "I won't make that mistake again."

Scalphunter was having trouble standing, and Blockbuster went quickly to his side, helping him remain upright despite his obvious pain. Blood poured down the gleaming front of Scalphunter's armor, staining it crimson, and Wolverine smiled broadly.

"It's not as sweet when it's your own blood, is it baby killer?" he snarled.

"Kill him," Scalphunter snapped.

Harpoon let loose with an energy-charged Slayspear, and Wolverine sidestepped it. There was no way he could avoid a joint attack, however. Even as he dodged, Riptide began to spin even more rapidly, disappearing in a tornado blur out of which projectiles exploded at blinding speed. There were small knives, Japanese throwing stars called
shuriken
, and metal burrs like a child's jacks with razor sharp points.

Wolverine's claws flashed as he moved sideways in a fluidly graceful motion that, to an untrained observer, might have looked like dancing. In truth, he had been trained intensively in Japan for many years, and was a master martial artist, equally at home fighting in a bar brawl or a formal ninja honor duel. He protected himself from more than half of Riptide's weapons, despite their speed, then dove behind the partition again for cover.

"Oh, Wolverine, please," Scalphunter said, and Wolverine could hear the pain in his voice. "Why drag this thing out. Can't we just get it over with?"

"Come and get me, bub," Wolverine said, his voice low, taunting, despite his pain. His body was in over drive, mending the wounds he'd received from Riptide, but it would take several minutes for him to fully heal. It didn't matter to him. It wouldn't be the first time he had bled on a battlefield, and it would likely be far from the last.

Even as two
shuriken
popped from his skin, driven out by his rapidly healing flesh, and plinked to the ground, he began to get impatient. Scalphunter might actually be correct. He might not be able to take them all. Not a pleasant thought, but something he had to keep in mind. Not that it meant he would have backed off under any circumstances. Just a possibility to be registered. On the other hand, he hadn't had any intention of taking the Marauders on by himself.

But time was wasting. Their mission was of primary importance, and these losers had taken up way too much time as it was.

"Come on you bunch of cowards," he snapped. "Come get me!"

"Die!" Blockbuster shouted as he charged through the wooden partition.

"There you go!" Wolverine responded, even as he crashed backward, out of the strip club and onto neon-lit Seventh Avenue. "That's the spirit."

Blockbuster was the stereotypical musclehead, all brawn, no brains. Nothing like Arclight, who was not quite as strong but a lot more dangerous. The huge mutant's fists pummeled Wolverine's gut and chest until Logan held up his left hand and simply popped his claws into Blockbuster's descending arm. The foot long adamantium blades sliced cleanly through Blockbuster's bicep, but the momentum of the punch pulled down on the claws, ripping through meat and bone.

With an agonized howl, Blockbuster fell back away from Wolverine and curled up on the ground cradling his thrashed arm. Blood ran freely from his wounds onto the pavement. Wolverine remembered the blood that had splattered the walls of the Morlock tunnels after the mutant massacre, and he felt good as he rose to his feet.

Scalphunter emerged from the club, a long, silver plasma rifle pointed at Wolverine's head. Harpoon rushed out beside him and held a Slayspear at the ready. Riptide spun onto the street like the Tasmanian Devil, tossing old beer cans and empty paper bags into a dervish around him, cackling madly. Arclight went to crouch by Blockbuster, to comfort him, and glared at Wolverine.

"You're dead," she said.

"Arc, get away from him," Scalphunter said. "No more weakness, no more individual attacks. All together, now, and we'll dance on the little runt's corpse."

"Sorry, bub, it'll take more than your lot to kill me," Wolverine said. "And you don't pay attention too good anyway. I said there were three things I had to tell you. The third was, I didn't come alone."

Scalphunter's eyes widened in alarm, and Wolverine snorted derisively.

Lightning flashed and Wolverine squinted against the sudden brightness. The air sizzled with energy between himself and Scalphunter as lightning struck the ground, leaving cracked and melted pavement in its wake. Above them, Storm hovered on the winds at her command, imperious as always. Wolverine loved that about Ororo. Proud yet quiet on the ground, once in her element, she took control of any situation with ease.

"The Marauders!" Storm observed. "Now, Wolverine, I see why you diverted from your course. We should not take the time for battle here, but the need for vengeance is undeniable. Also, if there is any chance at all that Magneto is unaware of our approach, we cannot allow these mass murderers to go free."

"While you talk, Storm, you die!" Scalphunter shouted, and lifted his plasma rifle to aim at the spot where Storm floated aloft.

Wolverine was about to dive forward, to slice Scalphunter's weapons, and perhaps the man himself. He had barely turned away when he heard Arclight moving in behind him. He spun and slashed, and caught her a glancing blow that scored the mesh alloy metal armor she wore. He had noted her speed earlier, and vowed not to let her surprise him with it again. She had tried and failed, but her real goal had been to distract him from saving Storm. In that, she had succeeded.

When Wolverine turned back toward Scalphunter, the leader of the Marauders was already pulling the trigger ..

Suddenly, a blast of energy slammed into Scalphunter's chest. His shot went wild, completely missing Storm, and he was knocked to the ground. Two more energy blasts ripped into him, and Scalphunter shook and jittered with some kind of seizure as blue light rippled back and forth across his body. Wolverine looked up and saw Bishop taking aim at the other Marauders, and his nostrils flared with a low growl that built into a great roar.

The biggest threat, without question, was Riptide. He began whirling ever faster, and razor sharp projectiles flew from the dervish he had become. But before they could reach their intended targets, they were whipped up into an even greater storm, a minor tornado that seemed to suck both the weapons and Riptide into itself. As he blocked a Slayspear that Harpoon had hurled at his chest, Wolverine noticed that the tornado Storm had created was spinning counter to Riptide's own turns. It effectively cancelled out his powers, for no matter how he tried to turn, Storm kept the wind moving in the other direction. In essence, he was hung in midair, completely immobile in the center of a tornado.

With one shot, Bishop took Riptide down.

Harpoon aimed a Slayspear at Bishop, and Wolverine shouted to warn him of the danger. Bishop turned and ran directly at Harpoon, screaming like a madman. Harpoon hurled a Slayspear and Bishop incinerated it in mid-air with his blaster. Wolverine moved in on Harpoon as well, and in a moment, the two X-Men had the Marauder trapped between them.

"Your move, Harpoon," Wolverine growled.

With fantastic speed, Harpoon drew another Slayspear from behind him and hurled it at Bishop, who brought up his weapon as protection. The spear struck the gun, discharging its deadly energy, and the gun exploded, knocking Bishop back several paces.

"You still stand?" Harpoon said in astonishment.

Wolverine hung back on purpose, knowing what was to come. Bishop had not been with the X-Men at the time of the mutant massacre. To the Marauders, he was an unknown quantity. Bishop's mutant power allowed him to absorb any form of energy directed at him and release it with destructive force from his bare hands. Harpoon had no idea what to expect, but he pulled another Slayspear from his quarrel and hauled back his arm to hurl it at Bishop.

Bishop didn't give him the chance. He had absorbed the energy from his weapon's explosion and Harpoon's Slayspear, and now he rechanneled it, turning it back upon the Marauder who, even now, was attempting to kill him. A blast of crackling green power burst from Bishop's fists and buffeted Harpoon's body like hurricane winds, tossing him backward through the blacked out plate glass window of the strip club.

Harpoon did not come out, and Wolverine scanned the street for more opposition.

"This fracas is gettin' downright boring!" Wolverine shouted. "Maybe you killers just don't know when you're beat."

"You want a fight, Wolverine?" Arclight asked as she closed in on him. "Then stop moving out of the way."

"I can take whatever you got, lady, and then some," Wolverine growled, sliding the claws of his left hand against those of his right, creating a chilling sound like six knives being sharpened.

"Come now, Wolverine, you must allow your adorable hirsuite amigo the opportunity for some merriment as well," the Beast said as he leaped between Logan and Arclight.

"After all," Hank added, "I was there in the Morlock tunnels as well. I have some demons of remembrance to excise."

There was a look of smoldering fury on Hank McCoy's blue-furred face that filled Wolverine with uncommon wonder. The Beast was the ever rational core of the X-Men, a good-hearted man who functioned on a practical, intellectual level most of the time. But not, apparently, all of the time.

Quickly, the memory of his run in with Arclight mere moments ago came back to Wolverine, and it hit him that the Beast did not have his unbreakable adamantium bones. If she got a hand on him, Hank could be in serious trouble. And she was fast.

"Hank, maybe you'd better ... " Wolverine began, but too late.

Arclight lunged for the Beast, the way a wrestler would, but Hank simply stepped aside and slapped her on the side of the head, knocking her down.

"Come on, then, hit me," the Beast said, tauntingly.

"As politically incorrect as it may seem—brand me a sexist if you wish—I would never ordinarily pummel a woman. But when it comes to someone who slaughters innocent people, innocent children, I'll make an exception."

"Aren't I lucky," Arclight sneered with sarcasm and contempt, then swung a large fist at the Beast's face.

Hank caught Arclight's fist in his own.

"Decidedly not," he answered, and slugged her hard in the face.

Arclight's legs collapsed beneath her. If the Beast had not been holding on to her hand, she would have crumbled to the ground. Arclight was a big woman, and with her armor on must have weighed close to two fifty. Hank picked her up, and without any visible effort, hurled her across the street where her body knocked a hole in the outer wall of an electronics store. She lay, unmoving, half in and half out of the hole.

When the Beast turned to face Wolverine, he was not smiling.

"I've heard revenge is sweet," he said quietly. "That was a lie, wasn't it?"

"Revenge doesn't help anyone, Hank," Wolverine answered. "It's just something that needs doin'."

Storm and Bishop approached slowly, on guard for any other members of the Marauders team.

"You can relax," Wolverine said. "It was just the five of them."

"Then let us secure these miscreants and move on," Storm decided. "We're wasting time."

"And we must catch up with Iceman," Beast reminded her. "The Marauders are not likely to be the only old enemies of the X-Men roaming around Manhattan tonight. I'm beginning to think letting him go on alone was a mistake."

T
he conference room was vast and ornate. The door and window frames, and the twenty-foot mahogany table were hand carved with elaborate floral designs. The high-backed chairs were upholstered with burgundy leather. There was a portrait on the wall of a man none of them recognized, but it was clear he was responsible for the splendor around them. The other wall was covered floor to ceiling with shelf after shelf of legal texts.

This,
Amelia Voght thought,
is the world that might have been mine had I not been born a mutant.
She had rejected the pursuit of wealth and privilege as measured by human standards, and had instead decided to fight for acceptance on an individual level, for who and what she was. When acceptance was not forthcoming, she realized that obedience might be easier to obtain. To achieve that, she become one of Magneto's Acolytes.

They sat around the conference room, and Amelia thought that almost all of them looked as uncomfortable in that opulence as she felt. Perhaps only Senyaka, whose background was a mystery to her, seemed at home there. The only ones missing were Javitz, who was still injured and whom Amelia sorely missed, and Scanner and Milan, both of whom Magneto had constant use for in the rapid construction of his new empire. Scanner was needed for communication and to pinpoint mutant bio-signatures as they approached Magneto's new headquarters. Milan, of course, was online and had become the nerve center of the empire, as well as the monitor for media and other transmissions.

That left Cargil, Senyaka, the Kleinstock brothers, and Unuscione. There were a dozen empty seats around the table, but Unuscione had taken the one with the tallest back, at the head of the table. As field leader, Amelia Voght had every right to that chair, and she knew without a doubt that Unuscione had taken it with every intention of rubbing it in her face.