Walking On Broken Glass

Part Two: Rook Takes Pawn

   Warren and I are sitting waiting in the rec. room, practicing our lines for when Rebecca and Logan come home. It's ten in the morning and neither of us has heard a word out of my daughter or her chaperone, so we're eager to exercise some parental control over the two of them – Warren is especially looking forward to tearing a few strips off Wolverine for not taking good care of his little girl, and I want to make sure that Rebecca understands that staying out all night without so much as a phone call isn't acceptable. All of these feelings are fuelled by the horrible sinking sense of worry that's been brewing in me since I woke up this morning – that Warren and I both felt when we realised that our daughter wasn't home after twelve hours.

   Suddenly, Bobby shoves open the door to the rec. room with one hand, and jerks a thumb towards the front door with the other. "I think you guys better come quick," he says breathlessly. "Logan just got back, and Rebecca ain't with him."

   "What?" I say, disbelievingly. "What do you mean, 'Rebecca's not with him'?" I don't know why I'm even asking the question, seeing as my telepathy already confirmed Bobby's statement before he'd finished making it, but apparently I need a third party to tell me what I already know so as to make it one hundred percent certain.

   Bobby points towards the front door again. "I mean Logan's standing out there looking like he's gone ten rounds with the freakin' Hulk, and your kid ain't with him, Betsy!" he says, his voice getting more and more agitated. Not waiting to hear any more, Warren and I push ourselves off our seats and rush out to meet Logan, shoving Bobby abruptly out of the way so that we can get to the front door as soon as possible. Bobby doesn't complain, instead just shifting aside as quickly as he can, and Warren and I find Logan standing at the door of the mansion. His clothes are torn and bloodstained, and his hair is even more dishevelled than it usually is. Predictably, he has no cuts or bruises to go with the stiff brown marks that pepper his shirt, but there is something in his eyes that looks like it affected him far worse. That doesn't concern me, though, since just as Bobby said, my daughter is nowhere to be found.

   Grabbing Logan by the collar, I shove him up against the wall angrily, my eyes aflame with anger born from the worry that I've been feeling all morning. Strangely, Logan doesn't resist, but simply turns his face away from my gaze, enduring my fury as if he knows he deserves every bit of it. "Where is she, Logan?" I cry, shaking him urgently. "What happened to her?"

   "I don't know, Betts," Logan replies, his gruff voice quiet. "She and I were at a bar and this… monster came out of a portal in the ceiling. I tried to stop it killing a guy, but it hit me so damn hard it knocked me out with one goddamn punch. I didn't come to until this morning, and when I did, all I could smell of Rebecca was some blood on the floor of the place." He can see my face streaking with even more anger, and he shakes his head. "There wasn't enough there for her to be in any danger," he says quietly. "My guess is, she got hit somewhere on her arm or her leg but it didn't do her much damage. The thing didn't want her dead. I think I remember hearing it say it'd come for her before I passed out completely, but I can't be sure. Everything after the thing hit me is kinda fuzzy."

   "This is unbelievable," I say, incredulous, feeling my anger starting to seep out of the small box in the corner of my mind that I've tried to push it into. "Damn you, Logan! I trusted you, and you let me down – and now Rebecca is paying the price for it!"

   Logan still won't look at me. "I know, kid, and I'm sorry –"

   "That's not good enough!" Warren snaps, grasping for Logan's collar with both of his cobalt-blue hands. I can feel his anger equalling mine, his eyes filling with a terrible, ice-cold rage. "You think you can just apologise and make everything all right again? Rebecca's our kid – you think you can just magic her back home by telling us you're sorry?" He shakes his head. "I should have known better than to leave her with you."

   That makes Logan look up, his rough, unshaven face flaring with sudden defiance. "Don't you dare tell me what I should and shouldn't think, boy," he snarls. "It ain't like I went out there last night intendin' to lose your kid. So don't try to make me feel like crap, because I already do." He shrugs Warren's hands off him with a single movement, looking at him in disgust. "Don't let that jealousy go to your head, boy."

   "Jealousy?" Warren says, incredulous. "What do you mean?"

   Logan smirks. "Don't act so innocent, punk. I can smell jealousy all over you – you just can't stand the fact that Daddy's little girl would rather spend her Friday night with me than stay home with you –"

   Logan doesn't get any further; Warren's right fist hammers into his compact jaw with the force of a gunshot, and the little man is staggered by the unexpected blow, spitting a mouthful of blood from his momentarily-torn bottom lip onto the expensive flooring of the hallway. Meanwhile, Warren is left nursing a badly-bruised hand, the skin already going an unhealthy purple. I can tell through our psychic rapport that at least two knuckles have been broken, or at least cracked, after having hit Logan's metal-reinforced cheekbone at precisely the wrong angle. Folding my arms, I give both men a scalding glare, making sure that they can both feel the utter disdain I have for their little spat. "Are you happy now?" I demand. "Grow up. Rebecca is in danger, and you're scoring points off each other. Go to hell, both of you…"

   Angrily, I storm off, leaving Warren and Logan dumbstruck. I can feel bitter tears forming at the edges of my eyes, fuelled both by intense frustration and by the sensation that I'm completely helpless. Almost on autopilot, I wander through the mansion to the drawing room, where Rogue and Jenny are taking care of Tom for me. When I push open the door with one listless hand, Rogue looks up from the sofa that she and Jenny are sitting on, and gives me what I can tell she hopes is an upbeat smile. "Hey, honey," she says, holding Tom out for me with her gloved hands. His two-month-old eyes focus fuzzily on me and he sneezes once, then once again. Under normal circumstances, I might have found that endearing. Right now, though, I haven't the time for it... which saddens me even more. "He's been a real darlin'. Didn't raise a peep or nothin' – did she, sugar?"

   "Nope," Jenny says soberly. "Glad we could help, Betsy. Any word from Logan yet?"

   "He's home. Rebecca's not with him," I reply, dabbing at my eyes with my handkerchief. "Logan says she was kidnapped…" Walking towards the large glass pane in the wall opposite me, I look out onto the garden, watching clouds scud gently across the sky for a moment or two. "He didn't see where she was taken, though – whatever took Rebecca knocked him unconscious and took her while he was out cold."

"Oh, no…" Jenny puts her hands to her cheeks, drawing them down over her face slowly, cold horror etching itself on her thoughts. "I'm so sorry, Betsy."

   "Don't be," I tell her, resolutely. "I don't plan on leaving Rebecca by herself for too long. She and I are linked by more than blood; I can still feel that she's alive in here." I nod down at my chest, against which Tom is nestled quietly (and inside which my heart is beating a rapid tattoo against my ribs), and continue "I'm going to find her –"

   Just then, the relative silence in the room is almost ripped in half by a piercing shriek, unearthly and tortured, like sheet steel tearing. The air in the room starts to shimmer, as if it's being heated by something – and then, a large funnel-like portal begins to open in the centre of the high ceiling above Rogue, Jenny and myself. I'm in a prime position to see what's inside the funnel, but nothing is really clear – there are blurry images of misshapen creatures higher up the sides of the funnel, but nothing is close enough to see properly… until something travels towards us increasingly quickly, its form taking on more definition as it hurtles closer, until it impacts in the centre of the room. Rising to its full height, I finally see what the thing really is, as the portal above it shrinks smaller and smaller until it vanishes. It – or rather, she – is a statuesque winged woman, her body lithe and supple to a supernatural degree, her wings rising above her head and ending in hooked black talons. Her skin is a strange purple, while her elaborately-plaited hair is waist-length and jet-black, and she wears little more than a thin loincloth wrapped around her waist, her full bosom displayed proudly and without shame. Her eyes are yellow and her pupils are like those of a snake, giving her gaze a hypnotic quality. Her face is possessed of a strange beauty that sends chills up my spine despite myself – her narrow nose and full lips seem to exude the same hypnotic quality as her eyes. She smiles at me, small fangs peeking over her lips, and for the first time I notice that the air shimmers around her slightly, a sweet musky odour enveloping her completely and flowing off her body into the surrounding area. The smell makes my eyes water a little, and I stumble towards the chair in front of me so that I can prop myself up again, the stench causing my knees to fold for a moment or two. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see that Rogue and Jenny are being affected in the same way as I am, even through Rogue's superhuman, half-alien physiology and Jenny's disruptive bioelectricity. The two of them look drunk on whatever the woman's scent contains, their eyes vacant and glazed. I blink once or twice, trying to clear my own vision of the fuzziness that is filling it, but to no avail.

   The winged woman sashays gracefully towards me, and even through my blurry vision I can see strange symbols etched onto her skin, gently writhing and pulsing with some arcane power. Their movement almost mesmerises me, drawing my gaze towards them almost compulsively as the scent of her musk addles my mind even further. "You don't need this toy," she whispers persuasively, gesturing with one long-fingered hand at Tom, the delicate claws on the ends of her fingers brushing against my arms as she slips my son out of my grasp, letting his head rest against her unfettered breasts. Dreamily, I watch her press him closer to her, as if I'm watching everything from somewhere outside my own skull. "Lady Mortis will be pleased with you, little one," she hisses softly to him, her silky tones soothing his soft cries with almost no trouble. A long, serpentine tongue flickers out of her mouth momentarily, gently brushing my son's face with its twin forks and leaving a long smear of pink slime on his cheek. "Don't be afraid." Then she clasps Tom closer to her chest and takes a few steps away from me, before she purses her full, black-painted lips and breathes out a sickly-sweet, lavender-coloured mist that envelops Rogue, Jenny and myself, expanding and filling the room almost instantly. It fogs my vision and makes my knees fold underneath me, my legs feeling like little more than soft jelly, and I can barely see her as she raises her gaze to the ceiling, the same vortex that brought her here yawning open above her as she does so. Once again, I can see the endless corridor inside it, but it doesn't register as it did before; I can barely tell what I'm seeing at this point, let alone make any concrete mental judgements. The woman looks back at me for a moment or two and smiles her reptilian smile, clutching Tom closer to her chest as she does so. "Sleep," she says simply, and the last thing I see before I fade into unconsciousness, along with Rogue and Jenny, is her spreading her wings and flying back into the same gateway that she emerged from. I try to reach for her with sluggish fingers, but the darkness swallows me before my hands can fully respond.

   Tom…

*

   The darkness is smothering and all-consuming – I don't know which way is up and which is down. My limbs are flailing in all directions, but slowly, as if I'm suspended in glue. It feels as if I'm falling through treacle, almost, with no end in sight. Suddenly, a piercing white light slices through the gloom and burns it away as if it had never been there, and I feel ground (or something similar to ground, anyway) come up underneath me, driving the breath from my lungs as I slam into it abruptly. Trying to find my bearings, I find myself staring up into the grim and humourless visage of Merlin, who is looking down at me with a mixture of disdain, urgency and concern.

   "Greetings, Braddock-child," he says in his ethereal, commanding voice. "The time has come, it would seem, to put my faith in you to the test."

   "What… what do you mean?" I say, still unsure of myself here in this non-place. Merlin snorts and taps his staff on the "ground" once or twice.

   "Is your memory so poor that you forget me so easily?" he asks. "I told you on your wedding night that you and your brother would have to face a threat to this world, did I not? That threat has arrived, child, and it has your blood-kin in her grasp. Your daughter was taken last night, and your son will be in her hands before you wake up."

   Something breaks inside me when I hear those words. "Why should this be happening to them?" I ask, despair beginning to entwine itself around my thoughts like a choking weed. "Why did they get taken and not me?"

   Merlin's expression hardens, and he makes a brief gesture with his right hand, making an image materialise between us. Around two feet tall, and extremely detailed, it appears to be that of a statuesque young woman clad in body-hugging black armour, her purplish-red skin, yellow eyes, and dark hair appearing strikingly similar to that of the twisted angel-creature that took my son. The only major difference is that where the angel's face was serene with divinely-inspired pleasure, her face is filled with a harsh, unyielding bloodlust. At her side hangs a long broadsword, its keenly-honed edges painted with intricate occult symbols, and her belt also hosts a pair of cruelly-serrated daggers, from which blood drips rhythmically. "This is the woman who has your children," Merlin says, before enlarging the image a little so that the woman's face comes into focus a little more clearly. "Her given name is Leela Taani, but she has been calling herself Lady Mortis for hundreds of years, ever since she slaughtered a Shi'Ar soldier in the hope of gaining the favour of the dark gods. She wishes to consolidate the power they granted her by another blood sacrifice – but this time she does not just want one sacrifice. There are ancient writings that tell of how drinking the 'blood of a family defiled' and reciting a certain blasphemous incantation will convey immortality to the person brave enough to attempt it – and in doing so will unleash cataclysmic forces that will tear reality asunder."

   "But why my children?" I ask, hopelessly. "Why not somebody else's?"

   "Put simply? Your blood, and by extension that of your children's, pulses with magical energy. Not just the magic of Otherworld, or of Spiral and Mojo, but that of the Crimson Dawn as well. Your life-essence is positively brimming over with arcane power, Braddock-child, and that makes it ideal for Mortis to reach her objective – true demon-hood." Merlin waves his hand and makes the image between us disappear abruptly. "But to do that, to gain the power she craves, she needs more than your children. She needs your blood, and that of your brother, as well as that of your husband and your brother's wife."

   My anger turns to confusion, and I have to think hard to find a reason why Warren's blood should be so significant (Meggan's faerie origins are enough for me to know why she should be necessary, but Warren's part in this is still a mystery to me). "Warren? Why would she need Warren's blood?"

   "Because you carry a piece of your husband's soul and life-essence inside you, Braddock-child," Merlin replies, although he is clearly disgusted with the idea of Warren being connected to me in any way, shape or form. "He is linked to the magical lifeblood of the Crimson Dawn through that fragment of his essential self, and so he is necessary. Your destinies are intertwined in more ways than one." He folds his hands together, the bony claws that form his fingers steepling in front of his face. "It would appear you have a choice to make, would it not?"

   "Save my children or leave them to die?" I scowl. "That's no choice at all."

   Merlin sighs. "I rather thought you would see things that way – it seems to be one of the only things that I find predictable about you. Very well, then: consider what the consequences may be if you throw yourself into Mortis' realm without any prior thought. If you try to rescue your children, and you fail, you will have handed her the very thing she needs. Is that truly what you want? Can you take that kind of chance?"

   I narrow my eyes to slits. "Then I'll just have to succeed, won't I? I'm not changing my mind, Merlin – I'm getting my children back, and I'll be damned if you or anybody else gets in my way."

   To my surprise, a slow smile spreads across Merlin's weathered features at that moment, and he nods appreciatively. "You're a brave girl," he says simply, his tone a lot more positive than it had been a second or so ago. "Foolhardy, but brave nevertheless. Good. You'll need it, if you are to do what has to be done." Then, he glances above his head and nods. "You had better wake up, Braddock-child. Time is running out, wouldn't you say?"

   With that, he snaps his fingers, and I feel my thoughts returning to my body like water rushing down a plughole, the white fog that surrounds me disappearing into a hazy, unfocused blur. An instant later, I sit up, sharply gasping for breath, not quite sure what has just happened, and it's a few moments before I can see and sense that Logan and Warren are knelt beside me. Warren is clutching my fingers with his uninjured hand, the other wrapped in thick bandages, while Logan's face is etched with a deep, overriding concern. Before I can say anything to either of them, though, blood rushes abruptly to my temples and I have to sink back onto the floor again. Warren and Logan immediately start forwards, making as if to help me back up to a sitting position, but I wave them off angrily. "Don't," I say simply, shrugging off their hands with as much strength as I can muster. "I don't need any help from you – either of you. Not now." Glancing over to my right as I push myself up against the nearest wall, I can see Rogue and Jenny, who are similarly groggy and disoriented from whatever the creature that took Tom did to us. Abruptly, Jenny begins retching discoloured, blood-streaked vomit onto the expensive carpeting, and Rogue instantly forgets her own fatigue to scramble over to her girlfriend's side and stroke her sweat-caked forehead gently, holding her long brown hair out of her face while she heaves acrid, stinking pink sludge onto the floor.

   "Breathe easy, honey. You're going to be okay," she says urgently – a frantic look coming over her face as she does so, indicating that she doesn't believe what she's saying in the slightest. "You'll be fine, you'll see. I promise." Part of me wants to stay, to help Jenny recover from whatever it is that's affecting her – but another part, the larger, stronger part, wants to pursue my children's kidnappers and make them pay for what they've done to me, and to my family. There is a coldness settling into my guts that I'm finding hard to resist… and worse, I don't think I even want to.

   Not right at this moment, anyway.

   I push myself to my feet with slow, agonising movements, feeling every tormented muscle screech in protest, and begin to make my way towards the door, my lips set in a tight line and the muscles of my jaw bunched and taut under the skin of my cheeks. Warren doesn't let me go far before he touched me on the arm and says "Betsy… where are you going?"

   "Chinatown," I say simply. "I'm going to find Gomurr the Ancient."