ENEMY OF MY ENEMY
[Disclaimer: If I did own the Titans, you can bet your last centime there would be some changes forthcoming. However, that not being the case, I guess I'll have to just accept them as they are.]
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Chapter Six – Discovery
It wasn't my fault. There were 'circumstances beyond my control' and that's my story and I'm stickin' to it.
What?
If you say so. … Sure. … Fine.
Fine. I'll tell 'em.
I'm sorry I skipped yesterday, but the clock is tickin' and it's not like we have a hell of a lot of time left. New moon's in two days, and we still don't … yeah, yeah, okay, so we do have kind of an idea of where Dorno's gonna try his ritual. That's what got us in trouble last night.
We were in Germany – and, ya know, we still are – in this patch of dense forest west of … was it Grubach? Yeah. That's a little place south of Ulm, I think it is. West of Munich, anyhow. Not that I'm the reigning expert on European geography, y'know. I'd never been in Germany before. Didn't speak Deutsch, but then that's why Rae was along. That, and she wasn't about to let me out of her sight.
Sweetie, I didn't say it wasn't mutual. You know how much I like … well, pretty much everything about you. I'm just sayin' … Ohhh … and that, too. … Mmm …
(there is a one hundred thirty-two second blank spot on the recording at this point)
Okay. I'm back. But I made a deal, so I gotta keep this kinda short.
I tried the Bones again, and got a completely different set of readings, so I broke out the Tarot and played around with them for a while. Everything pointed to central Europe, which didn't make a lick of sense as far as I could see, but then Rae … um, that is, we meditated together and after a while she got a vision. It was short, and didn't sound like it went with anything at first, but then we got to thinking about it from a 'big picture' standpoint and we both got a little uneasy about it.
So, long-story-short, we figured we needed to get to Germany as quick as we could manage. We talked it over with Nightwing, 'cause, ya know, we were gonna have to fly, and the Titans would have to foot the bill 'cause the T-Plane is in a bunch of pieces in the hangar just now 'cause Stone's upgrading something, so we can't use it and would have to go commercial, and Nightwing is Rae's team leader an' shit, so he would have to give us his okey-dokey, but instead he pulled out his communicator and talked to somebody for a bit. Then, about fifteen minutes later, the Watchtower shuttle landed on the roof. He told us it was at our disposal – his words – as long as we needed it. Rae gave him a look, and he shrugged and explained that the JLA was on board with all this stuff now. I'm gonna have to get the back-story on that one, because Rae grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him into one of their conference rooms and I don't know what they talked about but it got kinda loud here and there and lasted for about five minutes. I couldn't hear any details. Anyhow, when Rae came out, she looked satisfied. We took the shuttle. It was, uh, different. Felt like I was on the set of Star Wars. But it got us there in under an hour. We landed in Munich, and started nosing around, and it wasn't long at all before the shit hit the fan, big-time. We headed west, ran into this big stretch of forest and …
Okay, Hon, hang on.
I gotta go. More later.
####
The house was a small affair of locally-cut rock that sat on a gentle rise within an easy walk of the forest. Its first stones had been laid before the Protestant Reformation was even a gleam in Martin Luther's eye, and for the first four hundred years of its existence, its roof consisted of thatch. That meant that it had been built for shorter people, which led to the fact that the working surfaces in the kitchen were quite low. Greta, being rather tall for a young lady, hated working in their kitchen. It left her with an aching back. So, to avoid that problem, she always volunteered to see after the animals, a chore that both her younger sisters despised.
Greta liked it, though. The barn was warm and smelled of hay and horses and cow (they had but one), and usually she could take as long as she liked with the feeding and milking. Of course, Inga and Marissa just hated the farm on general principles. Their father was a rather successful novelist, and could live pretty much anywhere he wanted to. They could not understand why he would choose a farm of all things, why he didn't live any closer to the city than he did. Why, the closest mall was nearly thirty kilometers away! And in this rural district they had to attend school with all these grubby, clueless rustics who knew not one thing about fashion and …
And so on. Greta smiled to herself every time she heard them go off on the subject. How different, she thought, sisters can be! Taking after her father, she loved the fresh air and the quiet, the still mornings and the wisps of fog that chased each other about the meadows. Once, last year, he had taken her with him on a quest for truffles in the great, looming forest beyond the edge of their property. The size and age of the ancient oaks and beeches and lindens stole her breath and made her eyes grow round. It was under these sturdy limbs that she would go to study the magic that so fascinated her, for it was in this forest that she discovered the fairy mound.
From childhood tales, through programs on TV and sundry movies, to her very first encounter with a pixie not nine months past, Greta had always held firm to her belief that magic was real, that the modern age had not snuffed it out. Now, having two slim volumes in her possession that her parents would not be discovering any time soon, she relished the tiny glimpses of what she had come to believe was possible. She didn't consider herself a witch. That, she knew, was a religion, and she wasn't anyone's idea of a pagan. As a point of pride she pretty much dismissed all religions as irrelevant. But the magic inherent in the Earth, the ley lines flowing constantly, invisibly past and over and through … those she believed in! Those she was learning to feel, to understand, to use. And there were two that crossed right in the middle of the barn.
She sat at the junction, cross-legged on the rough flagstones, letting the faint lines of power flow through her, gathering some of it, tasting it to see what colors ran by today. With a thought she curled some of it around her finger; another nudge of her will caused it to glow. The nearest horse looked over at her and blew once before returning to his sweet feed. She smirked at it, glad that she had the farm to herself today. Their father had relented and taken his two younger daughters into the city for the day. She would be blissfully undisturbed.
This will work! It has to! Today she hoped to take the next step. If successful, she would be able to follow the instructions in her book of magic and coax the ley-force into rigidity, actually making a solid object from pure energy. Concentrating on the light in her hand, she drew it out into a long, thin shape …
####
Raven, noticing the sudden tensing of her lover's shoulders, glanced over at Jinx. "Something wrong?"
"I … don't know." She focused on the Tarot reading, but things quickly became blurry. Irritated, she gathered the cards back up and reshuffled them, then sat still for a minute, focusing on her question. A cut, another, and a third, and she cast the reading again. Her eyebrows went up. "Huh. Looks like we're close."
"Close? To what?"
Giving Raven a one-shoulder shrug, she offered, "The next step?"
"Well there better not be too many more steps. We're running out …"
"… running out of time. Yes. That doesn't shock me, Rae." She studied the layout briefly, nodded to herself, and gathered the cards. "Let's get the car."
"Where to?"
"West."
"Fair enough."
####
The farm Greta's father had bought encompassed some thirty hectares, most of which was pasture … rather unkempt pasture. They only had four animals that relied on it, so it wasn't as if it were an issue, and Greta and her father both liked the semi-wild appearance, so they never had it cultivated. However, an unintended consequence of this state was that someone – or something – could approach the buildings through the pasture without any real danger of detection. So the first hint the girl had that everything might not be rosy was when the horses, all at once, began to stamp and rear in their stalls.
####
"Pull over here."
Raven complied, parking their rental car in the small rest area beside the highway. "What's wrong?"
"Something … doesn't feel right." Jinx fidgeted in her seat for a few seconds, and then said, "I'm gonna cast the Bones again." She got out and trotted over to a large, flat rock, eschewing the wooden picnic table that some anonymous benefactor had provided in favor of a better connection to the earth. Raven watched from the driver's seat, knowing that she preferred going through this ritual alone.
A minute later, Jinx ran back to the car, yelling, "Fire it up! We don't have much time!"
Raven was peeling out of the parking area before Jinx's door was shut. The hex-caster pointed ahead. "You'll come to a fork before long. Take the south road." She was rummaging around in her valise.
"Got it."
Not many minutes sped by before they arrived at a stone entryway. "There!" Jinx exclaimed. "That's it! Go there!"
####
Greta regretfully allowed the connection to the ley lines to fade, stood, and walked over to the horses. Their eyes were rolling around, mostly the white showing, and Morgan, her favorite, refused to let her touch him. "What's wrong, boy?" She glanced around nervously, getting a sudden chill. The cow started lowing.
Something is out there!
Deciding that being prepared would be a good idea, she fished out the elderwood wand she had made, stepped into a ley line, and began charging it up. Even if the gun laws in Germany hadn't been so strict, her father would never have allowed one in his house, so that wasn't an option. Her magic, though, was something else again. Learning to discharge a flare of eldritch energy had been quickly and easily accomplished, and since that day a few months back she hadn't even left her room without the slim rod secreted somewhere on her person.
Turning around fully, she closed her eyes, trying to get some sort of sense of what was spooking the animals …
####
As soon as the car entered the property, Raven could feel it. "Shit! What's that?"
"I don't know. Bad." Jinx had Excalibur across her knees. Both her hands flamed pink, and she was channeling the flux into the sword. She could feel the thing's eager anticipation of battle.
"No duh." Her eyes tracking among the various buildings, Raven asked, "House or barn or …"
"Barn." Jinx pointed. "Punch it."
Their wheels threw gravel as they sped past the small, stone house.
####
Greta's hand tingled where she held the wand. Her mouth dropping open, she could only stare as part of one wall of the barn … dissolved … revealing a creature that not even her worst nightmares could have conjured up. It looked vaguely like pictures she'd seen of a monitor lizard, except it was at least seven meters long, jet black, and deeply wrinkled. And it had wings. And horns. And its eyes glowed a baleful yellow. And twin trails of smoke rose from its nostrils. She took a step back and raised her wand in a trembling fist.
"So nice."
The voice was low, and thick, and wet … a poisonous ooze that numbed her mind and made her vision go gray. This thing could not be speaking! She shook her head, trying to focus.
"So sweet."
It advanced slowly … no, it moved slowly. But it was suddenly much closer. Dimly Greta realized that the animals were going nuts, kicking at their stalls and screaming. With a yell, she released her wand charge at the thing, putting everything she had into the blast of bright energy. Its head jerked to the side as a gash appeared along its neck, and it let out a scream that practically tore the hair from her head.
####
Low groans filled the darkened room, offering counterpoint to the occasional rattle or clink of heavy chains. Dorno Velez-al'Aziz paced slowly back and forth in front of his captives, observing almost clinically the efficacy of his latest modification. The chains passed through the body cavity of each young woman, carefully threading back-to-front, under the lungs and between all the vital organs, but intimately in contact with certain nerve bundles. The wounds, sealed so they wouldn't leak blood, nevertheless were just as painful as when they'd first been inflicted. At random intervals an electric charge would run through the chain, causing at least one of the four to spasm and pull on the chain, an agonizing experience for all of them.
Velez-al'Aziz liked electricity. It hadn't been readily available until he was over a hundred years old, and he still thought of it as a novelty.
The first indication he had that anything was amiss was when a hot pain lanced across his neck. Stumbling back in confusion, he put a hand to the spot and rubbed, looking for a wound of some kind, even though he knew it wasn't possible. He couldn't be harmed! What was going on?
####
Greta found that she was crouched against the wall. How had she gotten there? Her gaze swung back around to the monster, which was coiled up in the center of the barn; it was glowing a deep blue, shot through with brighter blue sparks that clustered around its head and neck. After a few seconds the glow died and it straightened back out. The gash she had inflicted was gone. In an eyeblink it reared up and suddenly it was right there!
"Sorceress! Even better! Master will be pleased."
Her arms came up in futile defense as it struck …
####
Both car doors stood open as Jinx and Raven piled out and sprinted to the barn. The human yell, and the decidedly inhuman screech that followed spurred the pair to greater speed. They pulled up beside the big double-door, Jinx with Excalibur resting against her shoulder, scintillating with pink energy, Raven holding a short, stout object made of ebony that reminded the other girl of a small mace, except that it had a black jewel of some kind in the business end. She hadn't seen it before and had not a clue where it had come from. Nodding to Raven, they opened the door and swung inside.
Jinx's first thought was, That is the ugliest son of a bitch I have ever seen!
Raven's first thought was, A pseudo-dragon! Oh, hell, no! Screaming, "Kill it!" she held her short weapon straight out in front of her and loosed a blast of dark energy that looked positively solid. The black spike impacted the thing's front limb as it descended upon a cowering girl, snapping it cleanly in half at the elbow and knocking the monster back a couple of meters.
They thought the scream it had uttered before was loud, but that was only due to insufficient comparison. The deafening bellow it now gave literally knocked shakes loose from the roof. The screaming of the livestock was completely lost in the noise. Both their heads were ringing, and Raven actually went to one knee. Waves of sullen, viscous evil flowed from the hideous thing, nearly making Jinx gag, but she plowed ahead, bringing the legendary sword up, over, and down onto the monster.
Her hex-force-infused weapon impacted just in front of the shoulder and hardly even slowed, cleaving halfway-through the beast. A sharp sizzling sound marked when the sword gave up its load of hex energy. The pseudo-dragon jerked away with a moist, choked cough and curled up in a ball; a wave-front of vivid blue exploded off of it, knocking Jinx back a step. Pink sparks raced over its scales, concentrating on the mortal wound and seeming to sink into the creature. It shuddered once; it uncoiled and thrashed, beating the floor with its tail a few times; livid purple light filled its eyes, which then burst messily; and with a final, throaty rattling, it lay still.
Jinx dropped the sword, slumped to her knees, and fell over sideways.
####
Velez-al'Aziz drew long breaths, trying to make sense of the situation. The pain quickly damped and went away, leaving part of him wondering if he had imagined it, and another part of him fearfully peering around into the corners.
A few moments later, jagged, red-hot teeth sank into his right elbow. The exquisite torture pulled him to the hairy edge of consciousness; he struggled to remain lucid. Then, just as it seemed he was regaining control, a sheet of living lightning tore through his right shoulder. He spiraled swiftly down into the maelstrom of darkness …
####
Something was trying to get her attention. Squeezing her eyes shut, she muttered, "Go 'way."
"Jinx! Honey, are you okay? Can you hear me?"
Oh, yeah. That voice. That was … Raven. She cracked one eye open and quickly shut it again. Half a dozen self-propelled power tools were busily engaged in rearranging the contents of her skull. She made some sort of noise but couldn't be bothered with making it decipherable.
A cool hand met her forehead and gently fizzing energy spread across her face. The grinding, pounding pain subsided; she blinked and sat up. "Wha' hoppen'?"
"You killed it. It tried some kind of spell as it was dying, but I think your hex energy, and the massive wound it took, derailed that effort." Raven offered the girl a hand and helped her get to her feet. She glanced past Jinx, who swiveled to follow her gaze.
The pseudo-dragon was a long pile of blackness on the barn floor; just beyond it, a slight, dark-haired girl crouched against the wall, crying quietly. Jinx stepped over and knelt beside her. "Hey. Are you hurt anywhere?"
A muffled sob was her only answer.
"It's okay now. It's dead."
Bright blue eyes looked up and locked on pink ones. She hiccupped and stated, "Ich sollte … besser gewusst haben."
Jinx quirked a brow and looked back at Raven. "Your department now, Babe."
Raven walked over and sat next to the shaken girl, and they conversed together in German for a few minutes. Finally she nodded and said to Jinx, "She's been practicing magic for about nine months. Apparently she's pretty good, for someone with no actual training."
"Yeah, okay. How's she tie in to our dear friend, Senor Psycho?"
"Not a clue. But this thing," and here she held up the short mace-lookalike, "automatically takes readings from any magical creature or artifact it gets close to, and from what I could detect, I'll bet you a dozen doughnuts that thing there was his familiar."
Jinx was intending to ask about the odd device, but that comment pulled her off on a different tangent. "No shit? Well! Bully for us! If we knocked off his familiar, he won't be up to much. We might've just solved the problem."
"Maybe. Or maybe he'll be so pissed off that he'll move heaven and earth to get back at us."
"Yyyyyeah. There is that."
####
He didn't know how much time had passed. He didn't really know where he was at first. Somehow he'd ended up in his rooms; he lay prone in front of his fireplace (not that he ever used it) with his arms by his sides. His face was attached to the stone floor by a frozen puddle of drool.
Pulling his hands up toward his head, he pushed off the floor and yanked his head loose, ripping the skin of his cheek as he rose. The shock stopped him cold, and he stared stupidly as small drops of blood ran off his chin, making little plip sounds where they hit the icy drool. Slowly he sat up, bringing a hand to his face in disbelief. He looked at the red marks staining his fingers, examining a fluid he hadn't seen in decades. Curiously then, he felt the skin of his arm. It was … soft. That was wrong.
As the initial adrenaline rush wore off, and his face began to hurt in earnest, he realized that the small wound wasn't healing. That sent a chill racing over his whole body. What had happened to his ability to regenerate damage? This was very, very bad! He recalled a simple healing charm that he would occasionally use on his captives, to keep them from dying too soon. He never suspected he would ever need to use it on himself, but it was a simple matter to do so, and his cheek closed up and ceased its throbbing.
####
Jinx caught Raven's gaze. "You ever have a familiar?"
"No. My demonic nature doesn't lend itself to that sort of arrangement with mortal creatures. If I had one, it would need to be a minor imp or mephit, or some other denizen of the lower planes. That means it would be evil in its essential nature, and we'd be arguing about its duties most of the time. I don't need that." She regarded Jinx for a moment. "You've never had one either, have you?"
"Nope. It was my lifestyle that got in the way, being on the move all the time. And really, I don't know what I'd do with it if I had one."
"I figured as much."
"So, okay. Let's say this thing was his familiar. That means he knows it's dead now, right?"
Raven nodded once. "Also, depending on how long they've been together, he may have felt what it was feeling before it died."
"… Shit. Um …"
"Yes. Immediately." Raven moved to the center of the barn and concentrated. Her soul-self manifested, condensed to a swirling sphere, and gradually opened a portal into a dead dimension. Then another piece of the black energy lifted the pseudo-dragon and tossed it through the opening. The portal closed and the blackness sucked back into the demi-demon. Raven pocketed the short device she held and dusted her hands off. "That should do it."
"He can't track it now?"
"Probably not." She shook her head, her lips pulling back in satisfaction. "I'd say definitely not, given that its loss is going to cost him. He probably had several maintenance spells tied to it. That's generally the primary use for a familiar, that and being the wizard's gofer."
"Well what was it doing here? Why was it attacking her?"
"Both excellent questions." She shot a look at the girl in question, who was staring at Raven with her mouth hanging open. "I think we should have a good, long chat with her. But it needs to be somewhere else, not this farm, in case another bad-nasty shows up."
####
The next thing Velez-al'Aziz noticed was that his face was bare. Most of his beard was still stuck to the floor, and as he wiped his hand across his brow, it came away covered in long, white hair. Soon he discovered that whatever had happened had made all his hair come loose … including his eyebrows, and eyelashes, and nose hair. It was very … disturbing.
At that point it dawned on him that he was completely naked, and that really set off the alarm bells! He never took off his robe for any reason. Ever. He used magic to clean himself, so he didn't need to bathe. Extremes of temperature had no effect on his level of comfort. And the robe protected him from any energy and most magical attack forms. Where was it? Did it get left behind when he … when he …
The thought that he might have teleported skittered like a crazed spider across his mind before he squashed it good and hard. That did not happen. It couldn't. He refused to entertain the idea. He must have … been knocked out of the robe. Yes. And then he levitated up to his room. While unconscious. Through several locked doors. Yes, that was it. That had to be it!
Robe! His robe … where was it? And where was his primary staff? Back with his robe, near the captives? Being there was the last thing he recalled, just before the pain hit. Curious, he looked down at his shoulder, but there was no scar to mark the passing of the crushing torment he'd felt. Quickly he trotted and jogged and flew down the several levels to the dungeon. Entering his abattoir, he immediately spotted his accoutrements, zipped over, and slipped into his robe. Its frogs had not been unfastened, which he had to do before donning it, and were quite stiff from disuse. There was basically no other way to get it on or off … without teleporting. Again, he stomped that thought firmly on its pointed head.
Once he was fully dressed, in possession of his staff, and feeling slightly more sanguine about his safety, he took notice of his captives. They had been quiet and motionless since his arrival and now he saw that this was due to their being dead. How very annoying! Bending to examine one of them, he saw that the skin was charred around the spot where the chain passed through. "Electrocuted," he muttered to himself. "That is inconvenient. Must have overloaded when I … um …" Quickly quashing and redirecting that train of thought, he turned to the new task of re-acquiring the necessary virgins. And he didn't have much time. Irving should be returning soon with what would have been the fifth. I wonder if he could collect a few more before … before …
And that's when it hit him. The overall sense of unease, the feeling of being off-balance, the difficulty he was having keeping his thoughts lined up, all was due to a suddenly chilling lack: he couldn't feel his familiar. He couldn't detect Irving's mind at all.
But that … that was impossible! No matter how far away the pseudo-dragon was, he should be able … no physical barrier could possibly … the spirit connection was so complete that …
No. It just … could … not … be.
He sprinted and flew and crawled back up to his study, went to one wall and jerked aside a curtain hanging there. Revealed was a huge mirror, taller than he was and half-again as wide, set in a massive frame carved from a single chunk of hematite. The frame was crowded with arcane symbols that glowed a faint green; and as long as they continued to glow that way, the extra-planar being that powered the mirror would stay trapped inside. Holding a hand out toward it, Dorno spoke five words in a long-dead tongue. His fingertips turned black; wisps of smoke began trailing up from them; the surface of the mirror rippled and the faintest suggestion of a scream echoed briefly through the room.
"Show me."
The ripples increased in frequency for several seconds before the surface smoothed out. A whisper, the mere husk of a voice, asked, "Whom do you seek?"
"Irving." The tips of his fingers shivered to ash and fell to the floor.
The mirror went dark. For several minutes shadows and scattered bright specks flickered across its face. Finally blobs of light began to coalesce into the semblance of a pastoral scene. When the view settled, Dorno was looking at an old stone barn.
The voice spoke. "Ask your questions."
"Is Irving alive?" His forefinger shriveled, decayed, and dropped off. From his face, no one would have been able to read how much pain he was in.
The answer was long in coming, but finally the voice cracked out, "No."
A long breath and a narrowing of his eyes were the only signs of the emotional agony he felt at hearing that syllable. He held his peace for the space of several heartbeats, but then he asked, "Show me how he died." A second and then a third finger followed the first into oblivion.
The barn swooped in closer. The perspective passed through the double doors. Irving lay on the floor; his shoulder just behind the neck was cut deeply, the gash reaching well into his body cavity. Over him stood a woman, a young woman with voluptuous curves and purple hair, and she held … no! … could it be?
Velez-al'Aziz squinted to see. Was that a Spirit Wrack? He'd thought them all destroyed!
He turned his attention to the woman, willed the point of view to turn around so that her face was shown. Yes, he would memorize this face. He could ask no more questions of the mirror until a fortnight had passed, for the next question would cost him his hand, and that would take too long to heal. He had to perform the summoning, and for that he would need both hands.
Speaking the five ancient words again, but in reverse order, he shut the magic connection. The mirror went dark. Staring at his hand morosely, he contemplated his options while he healed the damage to his fingers.
Obviously he needed more virgins. He didn't know if the sorceress who had slain his familiar was a virgin, but he was very sure of one thing: she would have a place of honor in the summoning. Her flesh would be the first to feed Lord Neron when he appeared. Taking a stance in the center of his study, he summoned to himself eldritch fire; with it he drew a circle on the dark stone, established the Five Points, and spoke his curse, enchanting each one in turn:
"This I swear!
In the power of the Lower Congress, I swear.
By the Geas of the Grave, I swear.
Through Agency of Mind and Might, I swear.
With Potency of Fear and Flame, I swear.
On the Gods of All-Consuming Darkness, I swear.
She will pay for this affront with her soul."
The circle and the Points flamed high, higher, and then winked out. Dorno Velez-al'Aziz turned and stalked out of the room, his face a study in determined revenge.
####
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Author's Notes:
So, what do you think of Raven's prognostication ability? She was sure he wouldn't be able to track them. How do you think that might weigh in later? And what are his chances of being able to pull off that curse? All these and more to be explored Next Time. Happy reading!
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Ah, responses to sweet, sweet reviews! I love my reviewers. You guys are the best.
- Desuka Kira: Thanks for the insight! You raise a valid question. Here is my take on it, from two angles. FIRST - In the comic, Trigon had the nasty habit of killing off his family members. The only reason Neron is still around is that he escaped his uncle's notice. You might say they weren't close. SECOND - As do most inhabitants of the Lower Planes, Neron operates on a need-to-know basis with his minions. It's doubtful that he considers Raven's existence significant enough to share with Dorno. Even if he did know that Trigon had sired a half-breed (which he may or may not) he would dismiss said offspring as irrelevant. At least that's my take on it. Your Mileage May Vary.
- Spikesagitta: Ah, not Jinx, but Raven. The sorceress he saw in the mirror had purple hair and held a Spirit Wrack. That's Raven. Jinx is currently blond and was holding Excalibur. The mirror did not display or mention Jinx at all. Very odd, don't you think? -)