Housekeeping: Shout-outs to Nitus07 and Verthril. You guys are awesome.
I'd also like to take this opportunity to apologise to citizens of New Jersey. I'm sure your cops, weather, water and piers are all lovely. I know it feels like I'm picking on you, but I wanted to use a state next to New York, and Massachusetts takes too long to type ;o)
Chapter Five: Hunter of Invisible Game
Bobby ran, blindly diving off the warehouse roof. The thought of the damage a drop from such a height onto freezing water could inflict on the human body didn't even cross his mind.
Hitting the waves head first, his body plunged into the drink, and consciousness fused with the countless water molecules around him. Iceman wasn't just in the water, but part of it.
He spread himself out as far and wide as he could, desperately pushing the limits of his powers, searching for any sign of his kidnapped teammate.
Above him he could already feel the heat of Sunspot's solar aura and Cannonball's blast field as they skimmed the surface. When they entered the water the molecules around the former New Mutants boiled.
Ignoring the others now, Bobby Drake tried to clear his panicked mind. He needed to focus as his being drifted among the garbage, silt and seaweed. He needed to let the water show him where to look.
For a few precious moments he felt something, or someone, being pulled rapidly through the depths, just at the edge of his reach, and then it was gone.
Dragged through the water at breakneck speed by the slippery cords twisted around her neck and ankle, Jubilee was fighting a losing battle against whatever had yanked her from the pier.
She clawed desperately at the vine that wrapped around her throat, only to feel it tighten more. Struggling to keep her bearings as she was tossed and scraped against sharp rocks and jagged debris, Jubilee tried to cry out, only to swallow another lungful of the polluted water.
She felt like a hooked fish being reeled in.
With a sudden jerk her back rammed against the rough edge of a brick wall, before she was pulled up against it, out of the water, and unceremoniously dumped on cold concrete.
The vine around her neck loosened a little. Able to breath again, Jubilee felt her stomach heave, and she vomited up the putrid water – and the blood she'd ingested at the motel.
Once she recovered from that, it was the smell of the place that next assaulted her vampire senses. Wherever she was, it stank of rotting seaweed, and rotting flesh. Blinking the stinging saltwater from her eyes, Jubilee looked around her, just making out the curved walls of a large, crumbling concrete pipe.
She stiffened as the noose-like vine around her neck tightened again, and she was yanked roughly further down the pipe. Applying all her vampire strength, Jubilee slashed at the ground, burying her talons deep into the concrete.
Feeling the resistance, whatever was reeling her in suddenly stopped. For the next few moments there was silence, and no movement.
Jubilee felt the vice grip on her neck relax once more, ever so slightly. On instinct her right hand grabbed for it, trying to untangle herself from the slippery rope. Too late; just as she realised it was a trap, and with only one hand gripping the hard floor, she lost her hold, and with another forceful heave she was hauled through to the end of the pipe.
The fleshy cord around her neck relaxed again, but this time she resisted the urge to claw at it. "Brain work first," she chided herself, "unspeakable violence later."
Jubilee squinted up to find she'd been dragged into the middle of a dank square room, dimly lit with a single weak red bulb. Pipes of various shapes and sizes lined the walls and ceilings. Where was she? A forgotten maintenance room, maybe?
Still dizzy from her slipshod journey, Jubilee tried to force her body upright, placing most of her weight on her uninjured arms. It was slow going; the floor was wet and sticky. The young vampire didn't need a closer look to know what she was lying in: a rancid cocktail of sewage and human blood.
The hollow clang of something dripping off the tangle of pipes behind surprised her, and an oily voice whispered in her ear.
'You not pass out. Good… very good. We play all night.'
Jubilee whipped around as much as the noose around her neck would allow, and felt her stomach turn again.
The creature filled the tiny space before her, its undulating form a chaotic mess of rotting seaweed and rusty metal glued together with tarry sludge. It had no discernible limbs, and what might have been a head was grossly misshapen, the left side looking like someone had repeatedly beaten it with a heavy mallet. There were no eyes, ears or nose, only a gaping hole on the right side of what passed for its face, lined with rows of tiny sharp teeth.
Forcing herself not to freak out, Jubilee let her combat training kick in. Ignoring the grip the thing had on her, she launched her small body at it – talons first. Yet with every last bit of her strength added to her normally lethal swipes, the monster was still able to easily absorb the blows, sludge pouring into any wounds she manage to inflict.
The X-Man was a mere fly to be swatted.
Growing tired of their game, the creature ripped Jubilee off and flung her carelessly against a wall of pipes. She felt a rib snap and lodge itself in soft lung tissue. Luckily breathing wasn't something a vampire needed to do.
'You fight. The others no fight.' The creature's voice hummed with maniacal pleasure. 'I like. We have fun.'
It started to slither towards Jubilee, spewing seaweed-like tentacles from various parts of its mass and twisting them around the pipes on the walls to drag itself forwards.
As the thing shuffled towards her, Jubilee silently cursed the inferior pig's blood and vomiting of a few minutes before. There was no way in hell she had enough blood in reserve to mist-form her way out of this BS.
The creature reached out with another tentacle, curling it around Jubilee's waist before jerking her up of the floor and flinging her across the room like a ragdoll into a hidden corner.
The wall of the alcove felt smooth and slick against her back. The blood staining it was fresher than anywhere else in the room, and in her gut Jubilee knew that this was the very spot the other girls had met their fate – injured, terrified and at the mercy of the Jersey Stalker.
With its prey now where its wanted, the Stalker quickened its pace to squeeze into the alcove and press its miry mass on top of her, soaking the cheap fabric of her dress in dark black ooze.
The creature thrust its malformed head against the girl's neck and whispered: 'You strong. Will last. We play all night. You hurt. Scream. I like.'
Two more tentacles, rougher this time, sprouted from the back of the creature's head and they forced Jubliee's arms up high above her. She bit through her lip as she felt her bones twist, crack and break under the pressure. There was nothing she could do. If only she still had her old explosive powers, she cursed to herself.
A new growth from the monstrous thing violently ripped at the thin fabric of her dress, tearing it asunder. Jubilee shuddered as slippery vines started to roam the soft curves of her body, as yet another set of tentacles spread her legs apart, pinning her feet to the walls.
'You like?' – the creature's voice went unnaturally high – 'You like. No good. No scream.'
The monster reared back from her slightly, like a sculptor inspecting a marble to decide what bit to chisel off next.
Jubilee ignored it. With both her arms and legs immobilised, she knew she had only one weapon left in her vampire bag of tricks. Conscious of what the Jersey Stalker seemed to desire most – terror and screaming – she decided to ruin his party.
One by one she shut down every part of her body that still showed signs of life. Liver, kidney, lungs and finally her heart all simply stopped. For the first time in three years, Jubilation Lee was nothing more than a pretty corpse.
Noticing the change in his prey, the creature was confused. The girl had seemed so vibrant earlier, so alive. Had it been too rough with her?
Intrigued, the Jersey Stalker slid closer to its plaything, giving the tentacle around Jubliee's neck a slight tug. Her small head bounced off the wall with a dull thud. Her body was limp and lifeless.
Was it dead? The Jersey Stalker hated dead things. Dead things where cold.
A guttural wail of frustration loosed from deep inside its bulk. Refusing to believe playtime was over, the creature shoved its form against the late Jubliee, desperately trying to soak up the remnants of her body heat. It ran its slippery maw across her neck, and along the delicate contours of her cheekbones.
That's when the vampire struck like a cobra, sinking her sharp fangs into side of the creature's mouth and sucking hard.
Flailing in shock, the thing tried to pull away, but the will to escape was already draining from its body and its small mind was becoming clouded. Soon it lacked the energy to support its own weight and it tumbled limply to the floor, as the little parasite continued to feed.
Feeling the surge of blood gush down her throat, Jubilee could sense the instant the thing gave in and fell under her vampiric spell.
'The prey won't fight you once you start feeding.' Xarus had told her years before. 'They'll be like putty in your beautiful hands.'
The Jersey Stalker's blood was mutated and corrupted, but still human, and Jubliee could not stop herself. A whole two years without the taste of real human blood had left her thirsty and wanting, and as she slowly savored every drop of the warm claret, Jubilee gave in to the demon inside.
Hours later, when Wolverine and Gambit finally found their missing friend, she was sitting naked on top of the deformed monster, licking the remaining traces of its haemoglobin from her fingers.
Wolverine didn't even blink when he shot the emergency tranq dart into her.
Iceman stood watch at the entrance of a shoreline sewage outflow pipe with a yawing Sunspot, who was close to nodding off.
Trying to hide his irritation, Bobby reminded himself that the fiery mutant didn't mean anything by it. Roberto had spent just as many tiring hours searching for Jubilee as the rest of the team. He couldn't be blamed for being worn out.
But Bobby was wide awake. Having known the firecracker since she wore her first training uniform, he was disturbed by the horrible thoughts of likely scenarios playing out in his head. He kept seeing images of a little boy growing up without his mother.
The last few hours had been hectic. Iceman and the other mutants immune to the freezing water spent hours searching the area where he had last sensed Jubilee. Nothing.
Pacing up and down the pier, Wolverine was beside himself, teetering dangerously on the edge of one of his infamous berserker rages. Iceman was sure that if Logan hadn't been leading the mission, he'd be ripping the entire Jersey Shore apart by now. With no scent to follow, and his heavy adamantium-laced skeleton preventing him from going in the water himself, Bobby guessed the Canadian wildman felt pretty useless.
Three hours later and no closer to finding Jubliee, Gambit made a drastic suggestion that nearly got his head taken off.
What the ailing search needed was a trained telepath, and with Psylocke and Rachel in England, there was only one option left. If his beloved sidekick's life wasn't dependant on it, Bobby was sure Logan would've told the Cajun to take a long walk off the foggy pier.
Back at the school, Kitty was able to send out a wide spectrum Shi'ar-encoded message using Cerebra that any other version of the machine would instantly recognise.
The team expected to wait a while for a reply, but less than 15 minutes before a response came in a blinding flash of light.
'Well, Wolverine, it would seem you've managed to misplace one my students,' purred Emma Frost flatly as she stepped out of Magik's teleportation bubble. 'I'm here to rectify your mistake post haste.'
'Jubilation is no longer your student,' said Husk, with more than a hint of bitterness directed at her former headmistress.
'Oh Husk, dear,' Emma smirked, 'I didn't see you there. Lead any X-teams yet?'
Sam had to physically restrain his sister from decking the White Queen as she paused before the irate metamorph.
'You'll always be my students, Paige, no matter where you go. Now do be quiet, the adults need to talk.'
Even with Wolverine's constant growling and Emma's stinging jabs, the process of psy-scanning for Jubilee went surprisingly fast, with the telepath narrowing the girl's location down to an abandoned section of sewage works.
Now with a finite area to search, Wolverine stalked away without a word, blowing off the White Queen. But she let it roll off her immaculate back; she wasn't going anywhere until the "child" was found.
The nearest entrance to Jubilee's possible location was a bricked-up inlet pipe a few hundred metres down the coast. Wolverine made the call that only he and Gambit and he would be go looking for the girl.
Charging a card to light their way into the labyrinth of musty tunnels, the former thief nodded to the short Canadian to follow him. 'Time ta go huntin', non?'
Outside, Iceman and the others waited impatiently waited for their return. The White Queen stood some distance away, content to stare the other X-Men down and occasionally file her perfect nails.
The faint sound of footsteps splashing in the tunnel's rising waters roused Bobby from his reflection. Icing up in an instant, he stood ready to hurl frozen shards at anything that wasn't friendly.
His guard went down when he spotted the familiar glow of Gambit's playing card. When he could make out the face emerging from the shadows, he noticed the usual relaxed lines were drawn into a rigid frown. He was also without his trademark brown duster.
'So what happened?' asked Sunspot.
Gambit didn't even look at him. He just shook his head and stood waited by the side of the tunnel's entrance.
Second later Iceman saw Logan emerge from the darkness, his progress slowed by the now knee-high water and the bundle he was carrying, wrapped up in Gambit's trenchcoat.
Wolverine looked pissed.
Peaking out from the folds of the brown leather was Jubilee's pixie-like face, her usual bright features covered in a black oily substance. Around her smiling mouth there was a thick layer of red congealing on her chin.
Peering over the shoulder of his icy teammate, Sunspot uttered what they were all thinking.
'Oh crap...'
Next Time: With Jubilee stuck in full vamp mode, will the X-Men be able to bring her back? Guest Starring: The Forgiven.