xXx

Peter was headed for the subway when his senses picked up someone pursuing him. He turned to see Illyana shouldering through the afternoon crowd on the sidewalk. He waited for her.

"Parker!" she shouted. "I got your message. I found her."

"Let's go," Peter said, taking her elbow and guiding her into a coffee shop. They headed for a booth, then dark light flared and they were gone.

"There she is," Illyana said as her legs twisted to their goat shapes and horns unfurled from her forehead, a tail whipping behind her. The scrying pool rippled, and Peter saw Gwen.

Her face was dirty, she was crying and alarmed, confined in a close dark space.

"Get her out of there," Peter said breathlessly.

"Can't," Illyana said with a shrug. "I tried. She's tied into Octavius's network, so I can't pull her out even if he is asleep."

"It's about four thirty," Peter said, swiftly calculating. "Overcast day. We don't have much time before Octavius is on the move."

"Let's go," Illyana said as she grasped her sword.

"Hey," Peter said, hesitating. "Is that thing bigger than I remember it?"

Illyana smiled, a cold and vicious smile. "My power has grown," she said. "So has the symbol of it." The rune-traced blade was now a full two handed sword, nearly six feet long. She gripped it and swung it as though its weight simply provided additional power to her blows.

"What the hell," Peter said with a shrug. "It's Halloween, right?" He stepped behind one of the standing stones, and a few seconds later he came back around it. He tossed his clothes in a heap. He wore form fitting black mesh, smoothing over him and rendering him dark and sleek. Two pale eye spots covered his eyes in the black mask as he pulled it down over his face. "Now let's go," he said.

The stepping disk flared.

The pair stood in full costume on the top of one of the bridge pylons for the George Washington Bridge, a feat of engineering majesty. The wind tunelessly crooned through the cables as the suspension bridge slowly swayed. Traffic flowed fifty feet below.

"Oh. Cables. A suspension bridge. Is anybody but me having a 'duh' moment here?" Peter asked no one in particular.

"Peter," Illyana said. "Gwen is nearby. I can't pinpoint it any closer than this, though."

"Right," Peter said. He relaxed, letting the spider ghost's senses unfurl around him. Illyana watched the light fade from the sky. She shifted her grip on her sword and slid down into an effortless crouch on her haunches, her tail fluttering in the chill wind that whipped over the bridge.

Time passed uncounted.

"Under the bridge," Peter said tersely. "Something is moving under the bridge. Sounds and feels like loose cables."

"Let's go," Illyana said, rising.

"Mind if I carry you?" Peter asked.

Illyana hesitated a moment, then shrugged. "Okay," she said.

Peter grasped her waist and vaulted off the top of the bridge. Illyana bit back a scream as her stomach lurched with the sickening drop of unsupported free-fall.

With a peculiar 'whizz' like tearing silk, Peter fired off a stream of web and turned their fall into a graceful arc that swooped them under the bridge to sail up towards its underside. He let go of the web as they drifted up with an odd sense of weightlessness. Slapping against the underside of the bridge, Peter hung by two fingers, lightly holding Illyana in the other hand.

"Hokay," Illyana said unsteadily. "Remind me to never, ever do that again."

Peter tossed her up at the underside of the girders. She caught on to one and scrabbled up to hunch in a nook. She glanced around, then froze as she saw the pudgy man slowly swaying, hanging from the underside of the bridge by a single cable.

"About time you kids joined the party," Octavius said, his voice slow and slurred. Peter could immediately tell Octavius wasn't fully awake yet. "Are you ready for another beating?"

"Oh yeah," Peter pattered. "I'm collecting the whole set of beatings from delusional and psychotic vampire scientists. Yours is Number Eighteen, right between Hyde and Renfield."

"Force his hand," Illyana hissed at Peter from her hiding place. "I won't go far." The stepping disk flared around her, and Peter was alone with Octavius, slowly swinging in the steady swirl of wind under the suspension bridge.

Octavius swung towards him with a pair of cables, and one shot towards Peter. Peter released the webline, dropping as he fired out another pair of webs. One slapped across a cable in a sticky blob, the other hit the edge of the bridge's underside. Peter swung away, tugging on Octavius, who simply whirled and snapped the restraining webline.

"You're like some kind of big dangly wire dust bunny," Peter said, snapping out another line and twirling away, firing a line at random and letting it go as cables sang through the air after him, seeking blood, still groggy in the twilight.

Octavius hopped and sprang after him, arms crossed over his chest, decidedly unamused as his four cable arms scrabbled and swooped his blocky body around under the bridge, trying to pace the maddened spider ghost. "Yes, that's it," he soothed. "Prance and dance and swing about. With each passing second I become stronger, faster. Can you say the same?"

"You're boring me," Peter snapped, letting his patience fray. "Quit talking a fight and come over here and make me hold still, you ridiculous rotting sack of self-important freakish also-ran has-been. If you know so much about the darkstone, just spank me and take the power back." He let himself flip with a flourish, firing out another line that tugged him just out of reach of the hissing cables. He noticed that Octavius had replaced his damaged cables with new ones after their fight the previous night.

"You will never again see the sun," Octavius shouted. "Tonight is my night! Tonight I will crush you, I will slay your women, I will destroy your place in history and then you will beg me to finish you! And I shall, for I am generous. Or perhaps I will make you immortal and crippled, that I may enjoy your torment for an eternity of night that shall spread across the globe as I once again serve the forces of corruption that will drink the civilization of man in a single screaming drought."

"Hoo, a delusional ex-Nazi traitor," Peter pattered. "Dude, those glasses have got to go. Check these moves out."
He snapped a webline into the bridge over Octavius's head. The cables reflectively snatched at it, and the sudden force plucked Peter out of the air and flung him at Octavius. As Peter flew at him, his world was reduced to sensing cables; the water far below glittered with the sheen of light that lay across it from the city that was never truly dark, and above cars roared past oblivious, the wind strummed the harp of the bridge; Peter felt himself oddly at peace and at once fully present and absent as the screaming cables slashed through the air lusting for his blood.

He slapped one to the side, curling along it and tucking his legs up as another fired through where his knees had been. As though the moves had been choreographed, he spun in the air and took only a glancing hit from the cable that had missed and yanked itself in close, pushing through air instead of the small of his back.

As he flipped upside down, he slapped his feet onto the underside of the bridge and contracted his torso, his head whipping forward with the entire force of his leap, with all the muscular tensile strength the canny spider ghost could command.

With a resounding crack, his forehead slammed into Octavius's face, smashing into his horn-rimmed glasses and snapping them at the bridge, embedding glass in Octavius's flesh. Peter rebounded, bending up backwards and firing webs in two directions. As the cables flailed at him awkwardly, he managed to twist around them and use his leaning momentum to control the elasticity of the webs, sliding clear in an oblique path. He flipped in midair, fired out another webline, and was out of Octavius's range in a smooth whirling glide.

"What?" he said as he whooshed back through the air. "I missed that gloating. Speak up." He slapped against the pylon, the soles of his feet adhering to it as he rested his shoulderblades against the chill concrete. His eyes narrowed. "Welcome to my century, you son of a bitch."

A certain restraint fell away in Peter's chest. He felt a chilly rage race through his veins, a certainty that he was fully capable of killing the thing that hung beneath the bridge. Something ancient and dark that resided in the marrow of his bones, in the depths of his inhuman instinct, felt itself given free rein. This thing did not live. It could not be killed.

But it could be stopped.

Peter let Octavius feel his smile.

The vampire swung gently in the breeze, hanging by a pair of cables. His face oozed as bits of thick glass were pushed out of it by his healing flesh. One eye was torn, the eyeball punctured by chunks of lens. Octavius let a sneer dig lines in his visage as he regarded the bit of bone, meat, and skin that taunted him.

"I will kill you, Parker," he hissed. "Fate will not be denied."

"Maybe it's Parker fate to keep kicking your sorry ass," Peter snapped back. And the weblines were out. He whirled back towards Octavius. "We can't both be right. Bring it on."

Peter snapped out a glob of web that slopped across one of the frayed cable ends. As Octavius swung, the cable's frayed end was too gooped to grasp the underside of the bridge, so another cable took over. Peter fired out a few more wads, but Octavius was wise to his tactic, and the cables thrashed and twirled, providing Octavius with an odd balance that kept him swinging round and about under the bridge, unpredictable. Peter stayed well out of the way.

"How much web? Before you tire?" Octavius snarled maliciously.

Peter was closing again, snapping a webline up under the bridge that was too long so he dropped and was tugged back up by the elastic web, hanging weightless for a moment as his wrists lined up on his enemy.

Three cables slashed at him, wriggling with a vicious and limited intelligence of their own. Peter's hands reflexively snatched the cable and reached for another, curling into a ball as he smashed them together, their frayed ends frantically twisting. Thick web shot from his spinerettes, his forearms flexing with the unnatural force of the spat web. His leg shot out like a piston, catching Octavius in the bridge of the nose. The impact of the kick fired Peter clear, and he twirled and slapped at cable as he fell out of range. Web shot up and pulled him into a trajectory that let him slap against the side of another pylon.

"You are quick," Octavius growled, almost to himself. "I tire of chasing you. Your feeble blows cannot stop me. You cannot even begin to understand what I am. Surrender to me or I will destroy you."

"Or how about you quit posturing and actually do some fighting?" Peter said, trying not to sound out of breath. "Sooner or later I'm going to bash that ugly face right in and you'll have to reach into your head to wipe your nose."

Octavius pulled himself up so his hands slapped palm first against the underside of the bridge. His good eye rolled back in his head as his lips twitched in a paroxysm of effort. Peter felt a ripple pass through the bridge, then the pylon across the way from him quivered. A chunk fell out of it, and two cables lowered from it. They held Gwen, unconscious and grimy and slightly bloodied. One cable wrapped around her chest, the other around her head. Octavius leered at Peter.

"Well then," he said brightly. "Isn't this a surprise!" He thoughtfully regarded Gwen's limp body. "I was going to put her on the list of Parker women to slaughter, but I thought she might be a useful spectator to our little game of tag. Do you think I should crush her ribs, or her head, or just twist her head right off?"

Peter said nothing, watchful as rage seethed through him like a swarm of wasps. "Understand me," he said. "You have the power to kill this girl, and you can make me watch. But if you do, there is nothing on this world or any other that will stop me from holding your heart in my hand." He glanced around for Illyana. This was as forced as he could make Octavius's hand. He suddenly realized how grateful he was that in this moment he was not alone.

Right on time, Illyana's disk flared and dropped her, sword swiftly chopping. She mightily whacked the sword through the two cables that held Gwen; by the time Octavius realized she was present and sent the killing command through the cables they were severed.

Peter tucked into a somersault and kicked off the bottom of the bridge, firing himself down pushing against gravity as he slid through the air after Gwen. She fell, heavy cable still wrapped around her unconscious form. Peter heard the clattering bang of cables on girders as Octavius raced after him, but he filtered that out. Only one thing mattered. Only catching Gwen in time to fire a webline.

He knew it was already too late. He was not capable of giving up. Flexing his web sacs as hard as he could, he fired out a thin stream of webbing that tapped Gwen. He reeled her in as best he could as the vast, dizzying expanse of light-dappled waves rushed closer.

He touched her as a stepping disk flared. He barely registered Limbo flashing past as another disk flared and he found himself falling out over the river, fifty feet or so from the bridge and a hundred feet off the surface of the water. He caught Gwen easily and fired web out, adjusting their trajectory to whirl over to the bridge.

Octavius screeched rage as the stepping disk robbed him of his prey.

"Unclean thing," Illyana snapped coldly. "Your business is with me." Her gray cloak swirled around her goat legs where she perched on the broken hole in the pylon where Gwen had been concealed. The square amulet at her throat gleamed, and she leveled the two handed soulsword at Octavius in a single menacing gesture. "You want to tell me about my grandfather now?" she said imperiously.

"Why the coy act?" Octavius snapped impatiently. "You are drenched in the stink of Belasco, Rasputin's demon master. Why do you pretend you do not know what is going on?" He hissed frustration, and his cables all tensed at once.

Illyana reflexively pulled back into the hollow, but it was already too late. Octavius sprang. Her amulet blazed out at him, burning through his vampiric energy as he slammed against the pylon. Cables whirled and snapped and blasted chunks of concrete and steel out of the way as one cable writhed into Illyana's space, intent on pinning and crushing her.

She whipped the sword around, taking one cable off mere feet from Octavius's belly, and she shouted "Cttrock bandalia!" as a flare of red energy spun into existence around her as a screen. Octavius braced himself with his sturdy legs as his cables whipped around her mystic defense.

"Seconds," he sneered, his remaining eye livid. "You have seconds." His cables began squeezing into the defense as Illyana's knees bent, her hand thrust out and her head bowed as the barrier began to buckle.

Peter's hands fired into Octavius's back, sinking into his flesh and curling fingertips around his shoulderblades. Peter kicked off the underside of the bridge as he gripped Octavius. Startled, the vampire had no time to disentangle his cables, and only one held him on the bridge. As he whirled out of the way, Peter yanked his bloody hands free and he snatched the cable, tugging it off the girder with his incredible strength.

"Clear!" he shouted as Octavius flailed with one of his cables, relaxing the others. Octavius realized what was happening just in time to make eye contact with the demon sorcereress as she thrust her mystic blade through her defense, past his cables, and right through his withered heart.

The scream that burst from his throat could not have come from a living being. As the cables writhed clear and twirled in confusion, Illyana kicked off his chest with her goat hooves, tearing her blade clear and pushing up into the air and through the hissing mass of suddenly stupid cables.

Seconds later, her fall dropped her into a stepping disk as Octavius slammed against the river's surface with shattering impact.

Peter watched as the surface grew still again. A slow smile curled across his face.

By the time Peter got to where he had left Gwen laying on the service walkway of the bridge, Illyana was kneeling over her and checking her breath and pulse. She looked up, her red eyes dimly gleaming in the dark.

"She'll be fine," Illyana said. Peter breathed out a sigh of relief. Illyana stood up, and for a moment they regarded each other.

Peter held his hand up, and Illyana slapped it. "You rock," she said.

"Oh no, girlfriend, you rock," Peter said with a weary grin.

"No no," Illyana said as she leaned against the railing. "You rock, web-head."

"Okay," Peter said. "I rock. Now let's get to the wedding rehearsal that starts in five minutes."

"Five minutes?" Illyana said. "Damn we're good."

Peter chuckled, glancing down at his mesh. "I gotta change," he said. He shook his head. "Happy Halloween."