xXx
"Right," the scrawny man said. He smiled, the loose skin on his face creasing in familiar lines. "So you'll have a unity candle by Saturday."
"Shouldn't be a problem, Reverend Pulchester," Peter said with a nod.
"Do you have strong feelings about the vows?" Mary Jane asked, leaning forward in the creaky chair before the big desk in the church office.
"Well, here's the traditional vows," the reverend said. He sat up straight, clearing his throat as he picked up a sheet of paper. "Here we go. 'I, and your name, take you, and his name, to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to obey, till death do us part.' Then when the rings are exchanged, you'd say 'With this ring, I thee wed.' Something along those lines. But some couples do make their vows up these days."
"Not so keen on the 'obey' part," Mary Jane said, wrinkling her nose. "Hey Peter, let's do our own vows."
"Okay," he said slowly.
"Well, that gives me enough to go on," Reverend Pulchester said with a sigh. "You can give me your vows at the rehearsal tomorrow. You have my home number and my pager number in case you need to reach me. I'll see you tomorrow at six thirty."
"You got it," Peter said, rising. Mary Jane stood with him.
"Thanks for pinch hitting for us," she said with a faint blush.
"Not a problem," the reverend replied with another smile. "You kids be careful."
Peter and Mary Jane stepped out of the office, out the door, down the steps, around the corner. As the reverend busied himself with his paperwork, he utterly failed to notice the strange wash of dark light that bathed the parking lot for a moment as Peter and Mary Jane fell right out of reality.
"What. The. Hell," Mary Jane said, standing rigid as she glanced around in the wake of the light.
"Where are we?" Peter asked Illyana. They stood on a cobbled path, surrounded by thick ranks of greenery. The air was warm, stirred by a cool breeze. Above, an indigo vault of a sky was bedewed with glimmering stars.
Illyana was squatted down in a courtyard, staring into a pool. Horns grew from her head, her legs were twisted and goatish ending in cloven hooves. She frantically gestured at them to approach.
"Peter!" she said. "I was reading, and when I looked up this slime had already gotten into the house. He knocked on the front door, your aunt let him in."
"Who is it?" Peter asked as his blood froze.
"It's the guy, him, the guy who goes through walls," Illyana said impatiently. "I didn't dare break it up in case it got violent. He seems peaceful enough now."
"Right," Peter said, his jaw set. "Just drop me by the front door. As soon as I've led him off, get Aunt May out of the area one way or another."
"I'll back you up," she said. "If things go downhill, I'll do my best to save the situation."
"Enough talk," Peter said, squaring his shoulders. "That's my aunt. Let's go."
Aunt May answered the doorbell, and a smile spread across her face like a sunrise when she saw Peter.
"Hi, Aunt May, anything going on?" Peter said with a winning smile.
"Oh," she said. "I have a visitor, he wanted to see if I had any information on your grandfather Forrest."
"Really!" Peter said, walking into the house with a smile. "Well hello there, how nice of you to take an interest," he said, his voice as friendly as he could make it through gritted teeth as his eyes glittered with concealed rage. Shivers ran up and down Peter's skin; the creature before him was no longer a man, and the spider ghost knew it.
"Hello," the visitor said in his deep voice. His accent was unplaceable European. "I am Doctor Otto Octavius. I am a historian. My father knew Forrest Parker during the war. I'm compiling my father's memoirs now. I thought perhaps you all would have something like a box in the attic that might have memories of him."
Octavius was squatly built, with slightly bowed legs and long arms. His wrists were almost as thick as his forearms, and his fingers were square and stubby. His wide face seemed tainted by a permanent sneer. He wore thick horn rimmed glasses that were printed and rimed with dust. That was all obvious.
Peter sensed that he did not breathe. That his clammy skin was hard and dead. Some dark and vicious energy twisted and coiled in him. Peter's heart pounded. This couldn't turn into a fight. Not here. Not with Aunt May close enough to be killed by a stray blow.
"Tell you what," Peter said, "Uncle Ben did get a box like that. Forrest shipped it off and then got killed in the war. When I moved out I accidentally took it with me. Would you like to come over to my place and we could go through it together?"
"Excellent," Octavius said, rising. A smile squirmed across his features. "Perhaps we can chat about your memories later," he said, leaning towards Aunt May. Her hand fluttered up to her chest and she smiled at him, backing away slightly. She flicked a worried glance at Peter, who beamed obliviously.
"Let's go," Peter said. "Boy, it's a good thing I dropped in!"
"I am a lucky man," Octavius replied through his sickly smile. "Always have been."
"See you, Aunt May," Peter said as he led Octavius out into the night.
"Take care, Peter," she called after him.
Then the door shut, and she was on her own.
She let out a deep sigh, then slumped on the couch rubbing at her eyes and wondering why she felt such nervousness.
Then she tensed as she heard a strange hissing sort of noise from the dining room. She got up and reluctantly headed towards the kitchen. Picking up a broom, she took a few steps towards the dark doorway of the dining room.
All she saw was the gesture of a steel-clad hand, and she slumped into sleep. Before she hit the ground a stepping disk whirled up around her.
Illyana's disk whirled, depositing her in Limbo. She arranged Aunt May on a slab, then returned to the scrying pool. "What'd I miss?"
"Come on, Peter," Mary Jane said, her eyes full of worry.
"What's this all about," Peter demanded, clenching his fists as he walked a good arm's length from Octavius.
"To me," Octavius said, "it was two weeks ago when Forrest Parker embedded me in concrete." He sighed the contented sigh of a happy man. "Fate has awoken me for my revenge. I will kill May Parker. I will kill Mary Watson. Before I am finished, I will re-awaken the seed of pure evil that will cause Illyana Rasputin to bloom into the dark orchid she was destined to be. Perhaps I will allow her to be my consort. And, incidentally, once your women are slain I'll kill you out of courtesy."
Peter had already stopped. He faced Octavius as wind whirled down the street.
"I will stop you," Peter said calmly.
"Ah yes, the darkstone experiment," Octavius chuckled. "I knew Forrest had tampered with it, but little did I guess he would try to keep it for his family. No no, I worked on that project, headed it up actually. It was my idea to use animal intermediaries. I don't know what animal the darkstone was with before you were gifted, but I imagine I can guess from the fight we're about to have."
"You tested it on yourself," Peter said.
"Of course," Octavius said condescendingly. "Now I'm going to hurt you badly, thrash you a bit, maybe break your limbs. I will allow you to live until all your women are dead."
"You ever think you might have the wrong guy?" Peter said. "Forrest Parker was a double agent in Germany."
"Too true, too true," Octavius nodded. "But as an agent of the Red Skull he agreed to come here to the United States with me, to fight and kill Captain America. I discovered that he was a double agent by examining his belongings while he was out, so I was prepared to kill them both. He was only a mortal, after all."
"Doesn't seem that it worked out for you," Peter noted.
Octavius shrugged. "They bound me in cables," he said. "My powers were not yet complete. Two inch thick cables bound me and they plunged me into a vast block of cement. I could not free myself in time, and then I went into a long twilight of lifelessness."
"What woke you up?"
"Fate," Octavius replied. "My prison became my weapon. You know, there is an animal that can regenerate, that can change colors, that has incredible patience and stealth."
"There are a lot of animals like that," Peter said.
"But as I was wrapped in the cables in the concrete, I realized that I had not tapped the full potential of the creature that bit me." His smile twisted his ugly face again. "Let us see what your host has brought you."
There was an odd ripping sound, and Peter reflexively sprang back fifteen feet. He stared in shock as a steel cable, two inches thick and frayed on the end, tore out of the back of Octavius's suit and snaked up into the air, wavering as though testing it.
"It doesn't matter what you are," Peter said evenly. "You've threatened my people. You're not getting out of this in one piece."
Octavius roared laughter as his torso flesh and suit shredded, and three more cables squirmed free. Each was nearly thirty feet long, and the frayed ends flexed and twitched like hands.
Peter was pale, his jaw set, his spider ghost playing over the thing that faced him. The cables whirled and snapped like living things, and they had a hypnotic coordination. At the center, Octavius was distracting all by himself. Peter wiped his palms on his jeans.
"You cannot win, Parker," Octavius said simply. "Once I was gifted with the power of the darkstone, a vampire on our research team immortalized me so that my genius could live on and on through time. Ah, Necra, beautiful Necra. I shall find her in this time and see what she remembers of the age I have slept through."
"Necra the vampire, huh," Peter said. "She's dead. I saw to it myself."
Octavius fixed him with a cold glare. "No matter," he said stiffly. "I've reasons enough to see your guts strewn about. Shall we begin?"
Peter sprang towards him, low to the ground and cautious. A cable whipped at him with the velocity of a bullet from the side, and Peter twirled away from it in time to catch a singing cable on the shoulder. He bounded up and twisted, over the third cable that rushed at his knees with enough force to bust them wide open. He landed in a roll, bounding clear, but he slapped a cable aside and stumbled back as Octavius pressed the advantage, sending three cables whizzing down through the air with a peculiar metallic whistle.
Curling to the side, Peter flexed in a powerful leap that moved him out of Octavius's startling range. Web spat from his forearms, carrying him away from the cables. He dared a glance back over his shoulder and saw Octavius, oddly poised, the center of four cables that scurried over building rooftops and sprang with disturbing coordination as though they were his legs.
"Octopus," Peter grunted. "Gotta be."
"Why does Peter do that!" Mary Jane said frantically, gesturing at the scrying pool. "Why did he bait that guy?" She turned to Illyana. "Can't you teleport the cable guy here?"
"No," Illyana said, watching the chase intently. "I can't get him off Prime. As long as he has at least one limb on the ground he's grounded in a way I don't fully understand. And you've seen that I can't scry on him directly."
"So are you going to go help Peter out, or what?" Mary Jane demanded.
"I'm going to let Peter take his shot," Illyana said. "If he gets in trouble, I'll pull him out. If both of us engage, there's no backup. Besides. Peter wanted to tackle this guy." She looked over at Mary Jane. "You're going to have to learn martial arts," she said quietly. "Peter Parker doesn't need victims around him. You want to take some lessons?"
"Yeah," Mary Jane said, her eyes fixed on Peter as he swung into a construction site. "I think that's a good idea."
Peter swung wide, the web strand hitting a girder and swinging him around the way he came with great force. He slung at Octavius feet first, counting on the element of surprise.
A whirling cable slammed into his ankles; Peter felt something crack as he bit back a scream. He was through the arms and spinning with the force of the hit to his ankles, he used the momentum as a wind-up and he unloaded a punch to Octavius's torso, hitting him full force. Octavius doubled up with a grunt as Peter writhed aside; the frayed head of a cable whistled down through where his spine had been a moment before and a cable smacked the back of his head.
Peter felt himself pinwheeling through space for a moment, disoriented; things seemed to slow down as he tumbled out of control. Then a rasping buzzing friction got his attention as an arm whirled at him from a totally unexpected direction and wrapped around his waist.
The cable acted and felt alive, and it squirmed around him two, three times. Peter dimly realized he was about to be squeezed nearly in half; Octavius would leave him alive and unable to walk.
Octavius cackled a laugh as one of his cables touched a girder, one wrapped around Peter, and the other two hovered over him as though choosing the choicest spots to plunge through his flesh and tear him to shreds.