The Eternity Legion
Book One: The Gathering
By J.C. Lords (jclord96@aol.com)
Copyright and Trademark Disclaimer (Long)
Alien and associated characters, concepts and names are @ copyright and ® trademarks of Fox and related entities.
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The Riftwar, Serpent War and associated characters, concepts and names are @ copyright and ® trademarks of Raymond E. Feist.
Terminator and associated characters, concepts and names are @ copyright and ® trademarks of Carolco.
Doc Savage and associated characters, concepts and names are @ copyright and ® trademarks of Conde Nash Publications Inc.
Indiana Jones and associated characters, concepts and names are @ copyright and ® trademarks of Lucasfilms, Ltd.
Star Wars and associated characters, concepts and names are @ copyright and ® trademarks of Lucasfilms, Ltd.
Sliders and associated characters, concepts and names are @ copyright and ® trademarks of St Clair Entertainment and/or MCA Universal and/or USA Networks.
Charmed and associated characters, concepts and names are @ copyright and ® trademarks of WB Television Network and/or Aaron Spelling.
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Blade and associated characters, concepts and names are @ and ® trademarks of Marvel Comics.
Chapter Four: The First Mission
"The code name for this timeline is Wormwood," Lucian Worldwalker said. The Eternity Legion sat in a medium-sized auditorium, listening intently. After months of grueling training, studying, and beginning to get to know each other, they were finally being sent out on a mission. To Captain Picard, it felt like his first time on board a real ship, all those many years ago -- the same mixture of apprehension and excitement, his mind racing to try and grasp every aspect of the briefing. He felt young again.
"This is an Earth-based timeline. Local year is 1999."
In the middle of the auditorium, a holographic rendition of Earth sprang to life, along with the moon, and started to rotate.
"Eight months ago, it started." The floating planet was replaced by news footage. TV news, showing…
"Great, Night of the Living Dead" Xander muttered uneasily. The footage showed a cemetery -- and corpses clawing their way out of their graves.
"At first, the reanimated corpses just shambled along, attacking only those who strayed too close. Panic started to spread, however. The nations of Earth started blaming each other, and were on the brink of war. Then, a large object approaching the Earth was spotted. The discoverer named it the Star Wormwood, after the star from the Book of Revelations. It proved to be a strangely fitting name."
An object appeared over the Earth's image -- an amorphous mass with something like… tendrils writhing around it.
" Attempts to greet the newcomers produced no results. A manned vessel, the Xiaping/Truman, set out to make contact, as the object began to move into a stable orbit around the planet."
The images changed. Now the agents could hear radio transmissions and some visual telemetry from the international spaceship sent towards the star. Enthusiasm among the astronauts soon turned to terror, as they saw the object was full of wormlike, things that flew towards the ship, broke through the hull -- and tore the crew limb by limb. The footage was unedited, and quite gruesome. Even battle-hardened agents like Xena and Tomas were sickened by the carnage --worm-like things that ripped through metal, flesh and bone with terrifying ease, eating the still-living men and women in the space station.
"The worlds' governments tried to destroy the object," Lucian continued. The Earth's image -- and the thing orbiting it -- came back into view. Missiles rose from the Earth and reached out towards Star Wormwood. Picard watched the battle with clinical detachment. Primitive chemical rockets, probably tipped with thermonuclear warheads. The Thing above the planet dodged them with ease, altering its orbit so that the relatively slow missiles flew harmlessly past. Then an array of satellite-based weapon system tried to engage the object, and failed catastrophically.
"The object did not crash on the Earth. Instead, it continued pumping energy in a unique wavelength into the Earth's atmosphere. The effects were quickly felt."
More news footage followed.
"The dead rose in greater numbers. Where before they had been content to shamble around, they now actively hunted the living. Those killed by the Undead were in turn possessed by Wormwood's energies, and rose up as yet more Undead." The news footage showed pitched battles in the streets of New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Moscow -- street fighting, fires raging out of control, the walking dead overwhelming their enemies through sheer numbers. "Billions died in the fighting and the chaos, famine and plagues that followed the breakdown of society. They joined the ranks of the living dead. Now, less than a hundred million humans -- one in sixty of the 1997 population -- survive around the world, huddled in fortified strongpoints and remote islands, holding out for as long as their ammunition and food lasts."
Commander Riker spoke up, interrupting the briefing. "Excuse me, but why did we let this happen? We exist outside time and space in this Fortress. We could send the Enterprise and intercept that… thing before it kills billions of people." There was a loud murmur of agreement among the other Eternity agents.
Lucian's face looked sad but determined. "I wish we could. But temporal nexus points don't work that way. If we intervene at this point, our actions will affect the fates of 3.9 million timelines. If you go back ten minutes before our planned insertion time, the number of timelines affected drops by a factor of 10 -- we'd have to repeat the same mission ten times to save them all. Go back to the appearance of Wormwood -- and we'd have to perform the same mission 1.3 million times, to save every timeline affected." He looked over the stunned agents. "Now, with the Earth about to be utterly depopulated, is the time to move, and save humanity millions of times over. The survivors, if we prevail, will spread through the galaxy in a few centuries, and in a few thousand years will dominate hundreds of galaxies.
"This set of timelines has been large depopulated by the Adversary. Wormwood has struck at almost every intelligent life form in the galaxy already; Earth and a couple other planets are the only worlds left with a technological species. The creature has been weakened by its millennia of genocide, so our resources will suffice -- barely -- to stop it."
Most of the agents looked extremely unhappy with the situation, but nobody else said a word.
Lucian continued. "The mission is threefold. First, we have to engage Wormwood directly. Destroying it through physical attacks is going to be difficult, if not impossible, but a combination of magic and technology might be enough. On Earth itself, we need to find the party or parties responsible for bringing Wormwood to Earth in the first place. It had to be the work of a cult, using arcane means to call out to the Wormwood entity. If we disrupt their summoning ritual, Wormwood will be severely weakened, which will make destroying it a great deal easier. And finally, we must protect a small community in Texas that is about to be overwhelmed by the walking dead. A young girl in it will, if she survives, play a vital role in the reconstruction of Earth, and the unification of the planet and, hundreds of years hence, the galaxy."
"So we must divide our forces into three teams," Picard summed it up. "I believe the Enterprise and my crew must confront the space creature."
"Yes," Lucian agreed. "You will need magic assistance. Pug, Miranda and the Halliwell sisters should accompany you."
"Next, I need volunteers for the second and third teams."
Not surprisingly, everyone volunteered, and Lucian had to select the people for each group. The final lineup, as it were, had Buffy, Giles, Tomas, Maggie, Rembrandt, MacLeod, Obi Wan Kenobi, and Indiana Jones for the second team, and the T-100, Doc Savage, Hercules, Xena, Quinn Mallory and Wade for the third team. The remaining agents were kept as a tactical reserve, aboard the Enterprise. They weren't happy about it, but they grudgingly acquiesced.
"Well, this is it," Xander said as each team headed towards their posts. "Break a leg, everyone!"
"Status, Professor Arturo," Captain Picard said from the command chair.
"On line," Arturo replied from the new station on the Entreprise's bridge: he was the Trans-temporal Systems Officer, although he had politely refused to wear a Starfleet uniform and contented himself with pinning a comm badge over his tweed jacket.
"Engage," Picard said, feeling a little strange. It wasn't every day that a ship's captain gave the order to advance while the ship floated inside an enclosed chamber. Arturo activated the large-size Slider device, and soon a swirling portal of light large enough to accommodate the Enterprise opened in front of the ship.
"Go to half impulse," Picard ordered. "Brace for impact." The crew did so. The Sliding process had overcome the inertia dampening fields during a number of training exercises. This was no exception. People staggered as the ship was tossed around in the eddies between dimensions. After several long seconds, the Enterprise emerged at the other side like a fish leaping out of the sea.
"Captain, we have Wormwood on sensors," Data reported.
"On screen."
This wasn't the first time Picard had seen Earth being threatened by an outside force. He had seen the Borg hovering over the planet twice already -- on one occasion, he had commanded the invading ship, a bitter fact he wished he could forget. But this…
"Dear God," Arturo gasped.
The magnified image was much worse than what they had seen in the briefing room. The thing was huge, and alive -- its writhing tentacles were several dozen miles long, and they rippled as they moved, as if even more unspeakable forms lurked beneath their skins. Thousands -- millions, perhaps -- of long worm-like creatures hovered around the central mass, like diseased wasps protecting their hive.
Picard fought down an irrational surge of panic. "Release the shuttle, as planned, and then advance using attack pattern Delta, Mr. Data. Mr. Worf, do we have a lock on the creature?"
"Most of our sensors are not registering the entity, Captain," Worf replied. "But I have managed to target it. We'll be in optimal range in six seconds."
"Phasers and Photon torpedoes," Picard said. "Fire!"
Beams and bolts of light stabbed forth from the Enterprise. Some of them hit Wormwood. Others were intercepted by its myriad offspring, who sacrificed themselves to protect the central mass. Where the phasers and torpedoes hit, the unearthly flesh of Wormwood burned and peeled away, releasing a black ichor that floated into space.
"Kill it, just kill it," Phoebe said from the co-pilot seat of the shuttlecraft. She, her sisters, Qui-Gon, Pug and Miranda were on board, getting ready to engage Wormwood mystically. "Maybe they won't need our help after all," she said hopefully. She didn't want to get any closer that whatever it was. Just looking at it made her sick.
"Use the Force, Phoebe," Qui-Gon said from the pilot's seat. "Banish the fear from your mind and your heart. The entity is trying to overwhelm our minds, but it will only succeed if we let it."
Phoebe took a deep breath and concentrated. A brief vision -- worm monsters tearing into the ship, biting at her -- came and went; she dismissed it, and regained control. "I'm feeling better. Thanks."
"Wormwood has been hurt, but not enough," Pug said from the back of the shuttlecraft. "It is gathering energies to deal with the Enterprise, even as it sends an army of drones towards it. We have to protect the Enterprise, or it will drive everyone aboard hopelessly insane."
Qui-Gon had taught Phoebe how to see auras -- the life force pattern of all living beings -- by shifting her perception a little bit. She tried it now.
Wormwood glowed with black and purple hues, pulsating with energies that seemed to be the direct opposite of life. The forces were being gathered, and Phoebe could feel that, very soon, a torrent of anti-life would be unleashed on the Enterprise.
The world disappeared, replaced by a grey-and-white vision. Phoebe saw the bridge of the Enterprise. Captain Picard staggered under the mystical attack. Tears of blood started running down his face. Around him, crewmembers screamed and collapsed, dead or dying. The Enterprise drifted through space, and Wormwood rushed towards it…
The vision disappeared.
"Whatever you want us to do, you gotta do it now!"
"I've got something!" Prue shouted, holding the Book of Shadows. "A spell to protect the mind. Get back here, Phoebe!" Phoebe joined her sisters, Pug and Miranda.
"Yes, that will do," Pug said. "We shall pool our power."
The five magicians and witches chanted for several moments, and released the spell. The shuttle buckled under the sudden release of mystical power, but Qui-Gon's expert piloting soon put them back on course.
"It worked!" Miranda shouted. "We have contained the attack."
"Yes," Pug agreed. "But now the creature is aware of our presence."
"That really, really sucks," Phoebe commented.
It was too late to save the world.
But maybe there was still time for revenge.
He had prevented something like this once before. It had nearly cost him his life, and, more importantly, his humanity, but he had done it.
This time he had failed, and doomed the world.
The man in black leapt from his perch -- the toppled ruin that had once been a mighty skyscraper, and landed fifty feet down. He dashed for the shadows. A few blocks away, he could hear a gang of zombies wandering around, looking for fresh kills. They seemed to have a knack to detect living human flesh from a long distance.
Fortunately for him, he was not fully human.
The man called Blade moved through the darkness like the dark predators he had once hunted. Half-human, half-vampire, he had learned to control the bloodlust that was the curse of Unlife, and had become the worst enemy of the creatures of the night.
He had not been able to stop his enemies this time, however.
It had started a few months ago, as news of the dead rising from their graves started to become commonplace. His investigation had revealed that a cult that included both vampires and human necromancers was behind it. They were trying to summon the entity they called The Eater of Life into this world. He tracked them down, fought a brutal but inconclusive battle with them -- and then the Eater, the thing the media had dubbed the Star Wormwood, had arrived.
The events of the past week few days a blur. He had fought the zombie hordes as they ran amok. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them were destroyed at his hands. But it had been all for nothing. Blade could not be everywhere at once. He had nearly been overwhelmed several times -- and meanwhile millions of innocents had died, and then risen again. Coming to his senses, Blade realized that he needed to preserve, not destroy. Killing the walking dead would accomplish nothing; saving people would.
A few hundred survivors were even now huddled in a blocked-off subway tunnel. They were all he had been able to rescue from the Undead armies. New York had become a giant graveyard. The last spasms of the war between the quick and the dead had been fought in Central Park, where the remnants of a National Guard unit and hundreds of street gang members had made a last stand, destroying thousands of the walking dead before being overwhelmed. After that, people had just died, waiting in hiding places until the zombies knocked down doors and walls and fell upon them.
Food and water were running out. Soon, Blade's band of survivors would perish as well.
Driven by anger and despair, Blade had returned to his efforts to unearth the Cult of the Eater of Life. And now, too late for most of humanity, he had found them.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art stood untouched, like a surviving monument of earlier, better times. Appearances were deceptive, however. The beautiful building had been used to house the cult, somewhere beneath the marble pillars and the works of arts inside. The vampires and their necromancer allies had taken over the utility tunnels beneath the museum, and turned them into a place of human sacrifice and unspeakable rituals.
And now Blade was going to kill them all as they gloated over the death of mankind.
The half-vampire crept closer to his goal. Zombie patrols around the area were far more numerous than in other section of the city, confirming his suspicions. If he could get inside the museum before they spotted him…
The shuffling footsteps around him stopped, then started again at redoubled speed. He'd been discovered! "Shit!"
Blade struck the first knot of undead like a cannon blast, fists and swords lashing out. Zombies were flung about, skulls crushed, heads severed -- only wounds that destroyed or separated the brains from the body could kill the once-dead. Blade became a living whirlwind, a circle of destruction no one could enter and survive.
But there were too many of them.
His sword became embedded in the body of one of the zombies, and it slowed him down a fraction of a second -- enough for one of the dead to grab him from behind. A brutal backward head-butt dealt with that one, but two more grabbed his legs, and he went down. Cold fingers as strong as steel cables ripped into him, tearing off his body armor. He kicked and punched, but now that he was down for every zombie he kicked away another took his place. This was it, the end.
A bright light cut through the shadows of the dead city. The zombies, ready to tear Blade to pieces, hesitated for a second.
"What the fuck?" Blade said, twisting his head to see what was going on.
Men and women leapt out of a tunnel of light, rolled to their feet -- and charged the zombies.
A young girl spearheaded the attack. As Blade watched unbelievingly, she tore into the vampires like a tornado, a sword in each hand, decapitating the dead left and right. A man with a samurai sword protected her left flank, while a tall man in strange gold armor watched her right. They cut through the ranks of zombies in a matter of seconds. A second team covered their backs, led by someone with a sword that appeared to be made of pure energy. Blade was able to break free and join the fray. Soon, there were no more Undead in front of the museum.
Blade faced the motley group who had saved him. Introductions would soon follow, and hurried explanations, surely, before they had to move.
But, for the first time since the Star Wormwood stained the skies, Blade felt a glimmer of hope.
"So this is what El Alamo was like," John Trivette said as he finished thumbing slugs into his 12-gauge shotgun. There were precious few of those left.
His partner and fellow survivor said nothing, surveying the ground below . Like Trivette, he was -- had been, before the world ended -- a Texas Ranger. Now, he was one of the remnant, the last living human beings on the planet.
"Walker, we're almost out of ammo," Trivette said. Cordell Walker stayed silent, looking at the landscape like someone in a trance.
"Walker?"
"They are coming," Walker said softly. Trivette looked at the prairie below the strongpoint, the makeshift fortress that held four hundred and sixty people -- all the survivors Walker and Trivette and a handful of Rangers and National Guardsmen had been able to save. The "fortress" was little more than a shanty-town, tin huts, trailers and hollowed out trucks, surrounded by razor-wire and protected by four immobilized (for lack of fuel) armored personnel carriers and two antique M60 tanks, the last survivors of the Texas National Guard. The M60s no longer had any cannon ammunition, and their machineguns had enough for a few bursts. That was true for everything -- bullets, food, medicines…
But there were no zombies in sight. No moving ones, at least. The flats below their position -- the highest ground for dozens of miles around -- were carpeted with corpses. The stench had been overwhelming for several days, until it either died down or the survivors got used to it. Thousands of dead bodies of all ages, races and genders lay around them, torn to pieces by bullets and high explosives. Thinking of that battle, a few days after the frenzied evacuation and resettlement, made Trivette question his own sanity. Unfortunately, it seemed as if the entire world had gone crazy along with him.
"I don't see anything," Trivette said.
"You need to listen," Walker said.
Trivette strained to hear, but all he could hear was the crying of the handful of babies with the survivors, the sounds of work as people tried to improve their makeshift housing, the barked orders of a drill sergeant trying to teach men and women how to fight. And someone climbing up the observation tower. Alex Cahill, former D.A., now one of the leaders of Fort Liberty, as the shanty-town had called itself.
"Walker, Trivette, I wanted to talk to you about the medicine supply situation," she began to say.
"Hush," Walker said, uncharacteristically curt toward her. "Listen."
Finally, Trivette heard it, so faintly that at first he thought he imagined it. But no, it was real, a low rumbling sound. Like a distant roar, or like…
"Footsteps."
"It can't be," Alex said. "There's nobody to be seen for miles."
"Footsteps can be heard over miles around, if they are enough of them," Walker said. "One cow walking makes a little noise. A herd of cows, and you can hear it a long way. One person walking makes very little noise."
"Thousands of them," Alex said.
"Millions," Trivette added. "How many people lived in Texas, in every city, in every town?"
"We'll find out soon enough," Walker replied.
"Oh my God," Alex gasped, almost sobbed. She pointed to the West. "Look."
It was a blurred darkness, half obscured by the heat haze. It came over the horizon and seemed to fill the prairie. Trivette looked around. The wave of dead was everywhere the eye could see. "We're surrounded." He felt sick.
Alex turned to Walker, tears in her eyes. "Walker… Cordell? Is there anything, anything we can…"
Walker hugged her tightly. "Hush," he said, this time gently. He looked at Trivette. "You know what to do."
Trivette nodded. The National Guardsman had brought along quite a lot of explosives. Most of them had been placed as mines around the encampment, but enough had been buried under the camp to blow it -- and everyone in it -- to bits. If the fortifications were overrun, orders were to detonate them. It would be quick, at least, and there wouldn't be enough left of them to rise after death.
The rumbling sound of the footsteps was loud enough to be noticed by people in the camp. Some people started looking questioningly. Others, guessing rightly what the sound meant, started shouting in fear. Walker grimaced. This might turn into a panicked riot.
A clear, beautiful voice cut through the screaming and the rumble.
"Oh say can you see…"
It was Liz Delgado, fourteen, a beautiful Chicano girl. Despite her age, her charisma, intelligence and gentleness had made her a leader of the fledging community. Her singing stilled the panic, the mindless rage. People stopped, or took the hands of loved ones nearby.
Walker joined in the song. Trivette followed, and, wiping her eyes, so did Alex.
"And the rockets' red glare…"
They all sang -- young and old, men and women, the last living Texans on the planet.
" Oh, thus be it ever when freemen shall stand …"
And the song drowned out the marching footsteps of the hosts of dead.
As the last verses were sung, Trivette felt tears running down his face.
And then the light came, as if summoned by that final act of defiance, bringing in champions from different worlds. Several of them also paused respectfully, until the song ended.
"… O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave."
The Eternity Legion had arrived.
"Counselor, you are bleeding," Picard told Deanna Troy. The Betazed had bitten through her lip. The hands clutching her battle station were bone-white.
"The… entity… It's trying to overwhelm us with its madness. The protective shields are giving way. I'm trying to strengthen them."
"Baschir to bridge," the comm system blared out. "All psychically-sensitive crew members are complaining of headaches and hallucinations."
"Sedate the worst cases, keep the others under observation," Picard replied. He turned his attention to the battle.
It had started out well enough, but things were deteriorating quickly. The first volley had done massive damage to the alien creature: one fifth of its surface was a charred ruin. The Star Wormwood had not stayed still, however. It had started to maneuver, not as fast as full impulse, but fast enough to force the Enterprise to give chase. Every few thousand miles, it would then release millions of the worm-creatures, a cloud that the Enterprise had to avoid. Even as it fled, it also rotated, so the phaser beams did not get a chance to concentrate on -- and burn through -- any one part of its body.
The shuttlecraft with the psychics -- Picard still could not bring himself to calling them "mages" or "witches" -- had been attacked by swarms of worms, and had lost some ground avoiding them. It now lagged behind in the pursuit around the Earth.
"Phaser fire only," Picard ordered. "We'll save the photon torpedoes for a better opportunity." The smaller creatures around the central mass were proving to be quite adept at intercepting the torpedoes -- amazingly so, since the photon torpedoes traveled at warp speed. The creatures were using some form precognitive ability, apparently, similar to the Force powers some Eternity Agents displayed.
"The central mass is discharging a large number of the worm entities, Captain," Data reported. "They are obscuring our sensors."
"Fire phasers, wide beam, attack pattern Epsilon."
The Enterprise flashed like a strobe light, and thousands -- hundreds of thousands -- of the creatures were disrupted into nothingness. The ship carved its way through the monstrous host.
Data gave a startled warning. "Captain -- the creature has reversed course! It's on a collision --"
"Evasive maneuvers!" Riker shouted. "Brace for impact!"
The grotesque mass filled the screen like a foul tsunami wave.
It was the end of the world, and he felt fine.
"Children of the night -- what music they make," he said in a lousy Bela Lugosi impersonation, and tittered a little.
The members Cult of the Eater of Life gave him sidelong glances, but kept their mouths shut. He did not fit the mold of a cult leader -- he looked like a happy, grinning man in denim pants and work boots -- and yet he ruled the thirteen robed men and women who had helped destroy the world. He had found them, brought them together, and forged them into a cohesive group. On occasion, he'd imposed order the hard way, and the looks from his followers were marred with fear.
They called him Roland Ferguson, but he had many names -- Roger Freemantle, Richard Frye, Ramon Farragutt, Randall Flagg. This latest name, he instinctively knew, was a mockery of someone he had met -- would meet? -- at some point in his long lives. He also had many nicknames: the Traveling Man, the Walking Dude, the Dark Man. He knew -- or, more accurately, he intuited, much like a hyena instinctively knows and cherishes the smell of blood in the wind -- that he had lived many lives, and walked in the back roads of many, many worlds.
He could remember little of his past, but he knew that death always followed in his wake. There had been a plague once before, he dimly remembered. The world -- the worlds, really; there were other worlds than this -- could end in so many wonderful ways. This was but one of them.
Roland Ferguson leaned against a wall of the room, relaxed, and closed his eyes. His senses wandered away, up into space, where the Eater of Life floated above the world. "How goes, big guy?" he muttered happily.
The smile on his face twisted and became a savage grimace. Somebody was attacking the Eater.
That meant somebody might be coming after him.
He surveyed his latest masterpiece. His knowledge of magic was, like so many things, innate and unlearned; the necromancers had done most of the legwork, and most of the piecework as well. Thirteen sacrificial victims, each chosen for his or her piety, strength or will, and near-saintliness. They had been placed in a circle, and then the vampires -- a breed Roland despised, but which had its uses -- had started working on them. The floor was gummy with spilled blood and other fluids; vampires were messy, and they liked it that way. The negative energies -- bad vibes, some of Roland's pals from the '70s would have called them -- had been focused in the circle, and acted as a lens. All the death and horror of the world was being beamed up towards the Eater of life, charging It up like a battery. As long as they kept the juice running, the Eater would be invincible.
Nobody could be allowed to mess with this.
"Hugo," he called out. A large man emerged from the shadows. He was bald and hairless, heavily muscled and yet moving with a grace that belonged to a professional athlete -- or a jungle predator. In life, he had been a Serbian militiaman, responsible for countless atrocities during the latest bout of ethnic cleansing. Then he had been attacked by a vampire and turned into one of the Undead. Roland had handpicked him as his personal troubleshooter -- fast, efficient, and ruthless and cruel enough to impress even the Undead. The only being Hugo feared was Roland Ferguson.
Just the way it should be.
"We've got some meddlers coming this way," Ferguson said. "Get your boys and deal with them. Take all the guns, the grenades, the LAW rockets. I don't care if you bring down the whole museum, but don't let them in here. You got it?"
Hugo nodded. He wasn't a talkative guy. His hand gripped a black stone that hung from a silver chain around his neck. The stone had a red flaw that looked like a key, or maybe a glaring eye. He nodded again, and rushed to round up his gang -- all vampires, all brutal criminals and killers, all now armed with the best military hardware thieves could steal.
Whoever was coming down here, to the chamber room beneath the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was going to get quite a reception.
To be Continued…