Mythological Creatures

Bad Blood was outnumbered by close to three-to-one; the exact number of foes encircling them was difficult to determine in the guttering, reddish light of the flare that had preceded the team into the basement room. Pierce, More, Hangfire, Valence, Karnival, Ember and Sojourn stood together in the center of a rough-hewn chamber beneath the streets of Houston, surrounded on all sides by monstrous beasts, all based on the template of the metahuman Manticore.

The savage humanoid creatures varied from each other slightly, some significantly more muscular than others, some markedly longer-limbed, almost every one with a unique pattern of hair atop its animalistic head. But all of the Manticores shared the same basic physical characteristics: powerful arms and legs and a sinewy prehensile tail, sheathed in scaly orange skin, metallic harnesses, unruly yellow hair, pitiless scarlet eyes and sharpened teeth. And all of the Manticores shared the same predatory stance: hunched, like an offshoot that had only recently moved away from four-legged ambulation, with claws curled in anticipation of rending flesh.

"Right, right," Valence said sardonically, beginning to hover just above the dirty surface of the concrete floor. "Why make just one Manticore when you can make, like, nineteen? That couldn't possibly cause any problems or get out of hand in any way."

"I want all of you boys to know that I will still respect you if someone yells 'retreat' or something," Sojourn uttered quietly.

"Negative on that," Pierce answered. "We leave, they follow, and instead of one Manticore on the streets hunting for food, Houston has two dozen on a rampage." The guttural growls of the Manticores began to rise as if to underscore Pierce's words.

"Great, so we have to end this right here, right now," Hangfire said heavily.

"Could be worse," More pointed out.

With that, the flare Pierce had thrown into the room sputtered its last, and the room fell into sooty darkness, and the low growls of the Manticores swelled to ferocious roars as they fell on the heroes.

Officer Doug Koelemay had been with the New Orleans Police Department for twenty-seven years, and in that span of time his desk at the parish stationhouse had slowly but steadily transformed from a rational, square-edged piece of furniture to an irregular, almost organic accretion of folders, papers, bags, boxes and other sundries that defied any attempts at organization. Newcomers to the stationhouse quickly learned to give Koelemay's desk a wide berth, and never to disturb even the shallowest of its strata. Despite being recently elevated to Chief Investigator of Metahuman Disturbances, a leadership position which easily warranted a personal assistant, Koelemay continued to handle all of his own files and paperwork. He even opened his own mail at his desk, with good reason.

Koelemay sat behind the chaotic paper parapets with the day's mail stacked directly in front of him and a half-eaten shrimp po' boy on its wax paper wrapper balanced atop a slanted shuffle of monthly reports. Most of the mail was less than worthless, but he never knew when a request for a favor, accompanied by a couple of hundred dollar bills or possibly a cashier's check, would be posted to him at work. Nor did he know when someone who felt he had done them wrong might foolishly mail him a threatening letter, with or without incriminating photos. Koelemay had his ways of dealing with all such possibilities, but preferred to be the only one to know about them until such time as he decided on the best way forward.

Detective Alton Dejohnette walked up to Koelemay's desk and crossed his arms over his chest. "Workin' right through dinner, Doug?" Dejohnette asked.

In response, Koelemay picked up the po' boy and took a large bite of the sandwich, leaving crumbs of baguette and globs of remoulade on his salt-and-pepper mustache as he chewed deliberately. He swallowed after a few seconds, wiped his moustache with the back of his hand, and said, "S'pose I am."

"Thought you might," Dejohnette nodded. "Heard you might be workin' late tonight. Workin' here, for once."

"What's that now?" Koelemay leaned forward, eyes glinting coldly. "Fo' once?"

"Not like, say, last night," Dejohnette met his fellow officer's steely gaze. "Last night, you was workin' the streets, is what I hear. Meetin' up with folk like Clawster's boys. I'm sure you told 'em that with you on the metahuman crime beat, their boss's days in New Orleans was numbered. I'm sure you told 'em they should leave town or you'd make 'em sorry." Dejohnette's jaw clenched willfully as he finished, "I'm sure they was buyin' you drinks at Bombay Club on account of how grateful they were you was givin' 'em a head start."

"Mighty glad you're so sure," Koelemay answered, then took another bite of his po' boy. A few seconds of hostile silence passed, and Dejohnette turned diffidently and walked away.

Koelemay set his dinner down again and angrily snatched the next piece of mail off his desk. He could feel a small weight like a silver dollar shift within the parchment-like envelope. Koelemay tore it open and withdrew a small scrap of paper; the object alongside fell into Koelemay's lap. Koelemay read:

May this small charm be of great use at the appropriate time.

Koelemay picked up the charm, a round disc made of a dark metal with intricate inscribing that had been smoothed over the years to a point of utter indistinctness, like figures in a fog. A small five-pointed star shape had been punched out of the middle of the disc. Koelemay set aside the unsigned note and picked up the envelope again. It bore no return address, but was clearly hand addressed to Officer Douglas Koelemay.

Koelemay turned the metal disc over and over in his hand, and finally slid it into his pocket, his strained conversation with Dejohnette almost entirely forgotten.

The darkened subterranean chamber was briefly illuminated by Ember's blazing form, until a broad-built Manticore with a whiplike top-knot of yellow hair tackled Ember and smothered most of the light. Flashes of green cast by the verdant arcs of electricity that accompanied Valence's magnetic bursts revealed several shadowy forms, but the brood of Manticores moved quickly and the beasts seemed to be everywhere at once in the press of mostly uninterrupted blackness.

Pierce detached and extended his bo staff from his gauntlet in one fluid motion and the weapon was swiftly slashing through the fetid air in a figure-eight, one end striking the eyes of a Manticore with a high flattop of hair, the other end jabbing the chin of a Manticore with tangled yellow dreadlocks. At the same time, Pierce deftly maneuvered backwards, with the two Manticores following him. The flattop Manticore lashed at Pierce with its tail, which the one-time Checkmate knight leapt over; the dreadlocked Manticore made a swipe with a taloned hand, and Pierce twisted just out of reach.

Four of the Manticores dog-piled More, each genetically-engineered nightmare grappling with a different arm or leg and dragging Bad Blood's strongman to the floor. More struggled at the bottom of a thrashing mass of orange scales for several long seconds, finally focusing all of his attention on the Manticore attacking his right arm. More was able to get a hand around that Manticore's throat, leaving his other limbs to the depredations of the other three. He hurled the Manticore across the room, where it slammed into the wall with an emphatic sound of cracking masonry and crumpling metal.

Sojourn stared into the gleaming crimson eyes of the Manticore that had chosen to menace her, waiting until the last possible moment before the creature's lunge to shift to her spirit form. The Manticore stumbled forward through the ectoplasmic afterimage of Sojourn hovering through the air, and then Sojourn resolidifed behind her opponent. She reached out and grabbed a handful of the Manticore's bristly yellow mohawk, then snatched back her hand with a few hairs between her fingers. By the time the Manticore turned around, Sojourn was an insubstantial ghost again, drifting toward the ceiling of the room.

Karnival had flattened himself to two dimensions and laid himself against the wall like a dark, demonic cave painting. At his mental command, a huge illusory sphinx rose up between two of the Manticores. The phantasm had a sand-colored feline body and a lapis lazuli headdress, but its head was that of a gleaming black beetle, with massive, scythe-like mandibles. Karnival's psychic pet scissored its mouth appendages at the Manticores, and the brutes stopped where they stood, confused by the image that their savage brains struggled to make sense of.

Hangfire rapidly emptied the clips of both his semi-automatic pistols, firing round after round at three Manticores that had pinned him within a tight, lethal triangle. The Manticores shrugged off the bullets, enraged by them but unharmed. The monsters were further infuriated by their own inability to harm Hangfire, as their claws glanced off the old soldier's personal forcefield.

Valence tried in vain to find any kind of ferrous weapon in the chamber, but his magnetoception could detect nothing in the floor, walls or ceiling but inert concrete. He turned his alien sense on the Manticores themselves, and locked onto the steel-alloy harnesses each of the beasts wore. Thrusting a hand forward and balling it into a fist that crackled with green lightning, Valence polarized the harnesses of two Manticores, creating a forcible magnetic attraction between them. A heartbeat later, the pair of Manticores clanged into one another, held fast, and began tearing at each other indiscriminately. Valence extended his free hand and directed another Manticore toward them, causing the creature to fly through the air on an electromagnetic current.

Ember continued to burn brightly beneath the Manticore that had wrestled him to the ground. A second Manticore, this one with only a fringe of yellow hair around the crown of its head, crouched nearby and seized Ember's head, seemingly intent on separating the incendiary hero's skull from his spine. "Get ... out ... of ... my ... face!" Ember bellowed, raising the temperature of the flames around his head to such extremes that the entire basement chamber suddenly felt like the inside of a giant oven. The Manticore yelped and fell away.

"Face ..." Pierce repeated, as if reminded of something critical. He thrust his bo staff into the gut of one Manticore to shove the beast away, then brought his gauntlet close enough to the mein of its partner that the Creature could have swallowed his hand with a snap of its fangs. The Manticore opened its jaws to do just that, but Pierce let fly of barrage of sonics that ripped into the beast's face and sent it sprawling backwards. "The faces aren't armored! That's the weak point!" the leader of Bad Blood called out.

Hangfire re-holstered one of his pistols and drew a large hunting knife out of a boot sheath, then buried the blade up to the handle in the eye socket of one of the Manticores he was sparring with. The creature screeched in pain.

"For God's sake, don't kill them!" Karnival shouted.

"Why the hell not?" Hangfire grunted back. "They're just Frankenstein freaks ..."

"We don't know that," Karnival insisted, his two-dimensional skull and torso slowly separating from the wall and regaining depth. "They could be artificial lifeforms, or they could be people that have been experimented on ..."

The mohawked Manticore abruptly reared up in front of Karnival, claws splayed to eviscerate the illusionist. Just as suddenly, both of the Manticore's legs snapped and the creature crumpled to the floor, howling in agony. A few steps behind the beast stood Sojourn, holding a small, splintered bone that had several strands of bristly yellow hair tied messily around its ends. "Trust me, I'm the girl who knows some spirit magic," Sojourn said in a husky voice. "They're not really alive."

The remainder of the battle was brutal and short. More gripped the back of a Manticore's head in each hand and rammed them face-first into the cold, filthy floor with jackhammer force. Ember concentrated fiery heat into his hands and went after the eyes of the Manticores. Valence magnetically separated a Manticore from its harness, effectively neutralizing that beast by leaving a bloody, gaping hole in its chest, and then rended and reshaped the alloy into a crude lance which he drove through the foreheads of several other beasts. Pierce and Hangfire fired sonic blasts and bullets into the faces of the remaining Manticores, until the last bestial roar was silenced and only the after-echoes of the tumult remained.

"We should ... take one of these carcasses back with us," Ember suggested after nearly a minute of quiet. "See if there's any clue inside them as to who the manufacturer was."

"Agreed," Pierce nodded.

Karnival stood apart from the others and asked, "Got any body bags in your utility belt, Pierce?"

With the BB Jet secured beneath its camouflaged netting in the Mississippi delta swamplands, the members of Bad Blood followed the access tunnel that led from the aircraft's hiding place to their Riverboat headquarters. Karnival slowly brought up the rear, in solitude, until Sojourn waited for him to catch up to her and then fell in step beside him.

"Karnival ..." she began.

"You can call me Ed, you know," her teammate replied. "And I'm not mad at you."

"Pardon?"

"If you think I'm mad because the rest of the team more or less slaughtered the Manticores on your say-so ... I'm not," he reiterated.

"Well, I'm glad you're not mad," she admitted. "But that's not really what I wanted to talk to you about."

"Then I'm guessing you want to admit to me that you weren't really sure if the Manticores were technically alive or not," Karnival said. "And you still aren't. Am I right?"

Sojourn made no answer for several paces down the tunnel, then said, "You're right, I'm not sure."

"But you did what you thought was the right thing to do at the time," Karnival shrugged his lean shoulders. "That's all any of us ever do. And if you hadn't said something, someone else would have, probably Pierce or ..."

"No, wait," Sojourn interrupted. "All that aside, you still haven't heard what I wanted to say."

"Sorry," Karnival acknowledged. "Go ahead."

"I ... I wanted to hurt them," Sojourn confessed, her voice low. "It didn't matter if they were robots or disfigured human beings with souls, I wanted to maim them. Slay them. And not even because it was them or us, or because I was scared or angry at them or really anything to do with what happened in Houston. I think it was something I brought with me, that just finally came out."

Karnival stopped and turned to face Sojourn directly. He was struck by the look of childlike desolation on her face, reminded that despite her undeniable mystic powers and her unwavering dedication to Bad Blood, she was still a high-school-aged girl. "What are you saying, Delaina?"

"I think something bad has gotten into me." She looked at him imploringly. "Something really fundamentally bad."

"I hear you," Karnival said gently after a moment. "I don't know if you're being paranoid, if your nerves are shot, or if you're really on to something, but I promise we'll figure it out. Right?" He put an arm around her shoulders and guided her the rest of the way through the tunnel.

By the time Karnival and Sojourn entered the Riverboat, the remainder of the team was gathered in the comm-con room. The screens of the central computer were bright with electronic documents.

"What now?" Karnival asked.

"It's your lucky week for creatures of Greek myth," Clotty answered gruffly, winking into view on one of the monitors.

"What does that mean?" Sojourn asked.

"Manticores ... and Minotaur," Pierce stated.

"Remember when we took on LocoForce in Hub City a few months back, and they all teleported away at the end of the fight, except for Minotaur?*" Valence elaborated. "And we turned Minotaur over to the authorities?"
(* In Bad Blood #21)

"Now that you mention it, sure," Karnival said.

"Well the judicial machinery is chugging right along," Ember added. "Minotaur's trial ... his first trial, anyway ... starts the day after tomorrow. And guess which jurisdiction gets the first shot?"

"New Orleans," Karnival supplied, in a tone that indicated he already knew his instincts were correct.

TO BE CONTINUED ...

MESSAGES WRITTEN IN BLOOD ...

Send e-mail correspondence to badblood51@hotmail.com

No messages, no feedback, no letters column! Feel free to shoot me a line with your thoughts on the team, the current storyline, or anything Bad Blood related!

NEXT ISSUE: The trial of the millennium begins! Judge and jury, prosecution and defense ... carnage and chaos! Witness the disorder in the court, right here in thirty!