Eye of the Storm

a story set in the universe of Champions Online

"Hey, look over there!" a voice said excitedly.

I sighed and slumped in my seat, burying my muzzle deeper in my magazine. I wasn't terribly interested in its contents, but it helped hide my furry, bucktoothed face from gawkers. You'd think that I'd be used to this by now, as the only chipmunk in a world full of humans—and, in fact, I had been more or less adjusted to my unique status, as well as the celebrity of being the superhero called Nightmunk, but that had been before a certain recent incident had turned my world upside down. Now, I wasn't quite as sure of myself as I'd been before.

The human girl with short brown hair sitting in the airplane seat next to mine ruffled my hair and looked at me with concern in her big brown eyes. "You okay, Alvin?" she asked.

"Sure," I said, not looking at her. "Why wouldn't I be?"

She sighed, and I immediately felt bad. I reached over, took her hand in my furry one, and squeezed it gently. "I'm sorry," I said, looking up at her.

She patted my hand with her free one and smiled. "It's all right. Dr. Tarrell said it would take time. I just have to be patient."

I swallowed. "You have been patient, Julie, ever since we started this thing, and I'm so grateful to you for that. You've stuck by me every step of the way. Nobody could ask for more." I glanced out the window at the vast expanse of snow-shrouded Canadian wilderness far below. "I just wish Tarrell lived someplace a little less isolated."

Julie shrugged. "That's the drawback of being one of the world's most powerful telepaths. Less thoughts to block out. But at least we know you're okay, now." She smiled.

"More or less," I said, still gazing out the window. The plane had entered a cloud bank and now appeared to be flying through a sea of milk. I couldn't even see the wing anymore. Then there was a bump, and Julie and I bounced in our seats.

"I hate flying," said Julie, through clenched teeth, gripping the armrests of her seat.

I grinned up at her. As the superheroine Nightfox, she flew her grav bike around Millennium City all the time. Of course, she was in control then. Here, on a commercial airliner, she wasn't in control of anything. She was just another passenger stuck inside a metal tube traveling ten miles a minute seven miles up, and while we were both superheroes, neither of us had any actual super powers. If anything went wrong, we were as helpless as anyone.

Speaking of something going wrong, the plane shook again, hard, and one of the flight attendants lost her balance. Julie sprang to her with astounding speed, grabbing and steadying her. The flight attendant smiled, thanking her, and Julie smiled back and nodded. Then the "fasten seat belts" sign lit up. Julie returned to her seat and we both strapped ourselves in. There was a click as the public address system came on, and a craggy but calm voice filled the cabin.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your pilot, Captain Torn, speaking. We're passing through a storm system, and as you've no doubt noticed, we're experiencing some turbulence. It's perfectly normal, nothing to worry about, but we do request that you stay in your seats with your belts fastened, for your own safety. I don't anticipate any delay in our arrival at Millennium City. I'll keep you informed. Thank you." The system clicked off.

"I can't wait to be back on the ground," said Julie, grinding her teeth.

"That's going to happen regardless," I said. Then I leaned over and whispered to her. "Why don't you use your ninja discipline to make your fear go away?"

Julie nodded and closed her eyes, concentrating, and her breathing slowed as her body relaxed. I looked at her enviously, wishing I could do that. She'd been trying to teach me, but it took years to learn. Then again, I hadn't been possessed by the spirit of a dead ninja and absorbed his skills.

The plane shook again, violently, and some of the passengers cried out in fear. The flight attendants quickly reassured them that everything was fine, but I was growing less and less confident of that. My suspicions were confirmed when Julie's eyes snapped open, and she said, in a calm, low voice, "This is no ordinary storm."

I didn't doubt her, because two of a ninja's nine levels of power are toh, harmony with the universe, and kai, premonition of danger. If Julie said something weird was going on, then something weird was going on. "Any idea what's causing it?" I asked, unease gnawing at my innards.

Julie closed her eyes, breathed in deeply, then exhaled. "A power . . . we've both felt before. It comes . . . from the Qliphoth."

My blood turned to ice water at the mention of that word. The Qliphoth—also called the Shining Darkness—is a multiverse of dimensions that predates the Sephiroth, the current multiverse that Earth's dimension belongs to. It is a place of evil and chaos, home to countless unspeakable horrors. I'd been there once before. If you want something to call Hell, it fits the bill nicely. "Is it Shadow Destroyer?" I asked, the potential cosmic threat momentarily eclipsing the immediate mundane threat of our plane crashing.

"I don't know," Julie replied. "Maybe."

Further revelations would have to wait, as another violent shudder wracked our plane, making its tortured air frame groan in protest. There could no longer be any doubt that something was seriously wrong, and passengers were screaming in terror. A moment later, there was a shriek of tearing metal, and my ears were filled with roaring wind as the air was sucked out of my lungs. Oxygen masks fell from the ceiling, their release triggered automatically by the loss of cabin pressure, and Julie and I each grabbed one and strapped it on. If we were going to crash, at least we'd be awake to enjoy it. I glanced back over my shoulder at the rear of the plane.

There was a gaping hole behind us, with only soupy whiteness beyond. The tail was gone.

The plane tilted forward at a steep angle as it began its death dive toward the snowy wilderness far below. Oceanica Flight 408 was going down.

I peered out the window at the wing of the plane as it cut through the clouds, vaporous white wisps racing across it. I wasn't afraid. My time in the fight pits on Monster Island had conditioned me to view impending death calmly and abstractly. That was how I'd managed to survive them, and partly why I'd chosen the life I had. With the tail gone, the plane was nose-heavy. Accordingly, Captain Torn had raised the wing flaps to create drag that would lift the nose upward. If we hit the ground at a shallow enough angle, there was at least some chance we'd survive. The man clearly knew his stuff. I reached over and grasped Julie's hand, squeezing it as I looked up at her. If I was going to die, I wanted the last thing I saw to be her face. She looked back at me and smiled beneath her oxygen mask.

The impact was like being socked in the gut with a baseball bat. My body snapped forward so that my head was between my feet, my seatbelt squeezing my innards so hard it felt as if they'd come out my mouth. On top of that, the plane was shaking as though some giant construction worker had taken a jackhammer to it. Then there was another wrenching impact, accompanied by the screech of metal pushed far beyond its limits, and the world turned upside down. I was jerked about like a rag doll as the plane bounced and rolled. Then it stopped, and everything was suddenly quiet.

I opened my eyes and took stock of myself. I was alive, obviously—bruised, but alive. I was also sitting upright. I looked over at Julie. She was rubbing her forehead and grimacing, and my heart swelled with joy. Against all odds, we'd both survived. Incredible.

I pulled off my oxygen mask, unlatched my seatbelt, stood up on my seat, and looked forward. I could see trees and snow through a gaping hole in front of me. The fuselage must have broken in half. I looked around at my fellow passengers. Some were unconsicous, some were moaning in pain, and some were just sitting there staring in shock, apparently just as amazed that they were still alive as I was. I glanced out the window. There was only a jagged stub where the wing had been. Apparently, the wings had been sheared off in the crash, which explained the lack of any fire—that was where the fuel tanks were.

I gave Julie a kiss and a hug, then climbed onto the backs of the seats in front of me, my mind automatically sorting through a list of things to do. The first was to see to the needs of the passengers. I was trained in first aid, so I could at least provide some basic medical assistance. I knew that the flight attendants were too, but their stations had been behind the control cabin and in the tail. The ones in the tail were undoubtably dead, and the ones in the front were with that part of the plane, assuming they hadn't been killed in the crash. I took out my cell phone and tried to call for help, but there was no signal. Either we were out of range of the nearest cell tower, or there was too much interference from the storm. Whatever the reason, we were on our own.

I opened the overhead compartment and removed my suitcase. Inside was my Nightmunk body armor, with a utility belt containing medical supplies—painkillers, coagulants, disinfectants, things like that. I suited up quickly, then began moving from seat to seat, checking each passenger. There were thirty-three people in our section of the plane. Four were dead from being tossed around like beanbags in a dryer, and six appeared to have serious injuries. One woman was choking on her own blood, probably caused by a broken rib puncturing a lung. I looked up at Julie as she came over to join me. "I can't do anything for her," I said. "How about you?"

Julie pressed her lips together. Another of a ninja's nine levels of power is sha, healing of self and others. Unfortunately, it drained her of chi, or spiritual energy. She placed her hands on the woman's chest and closed her eyes. Gradually, the woman stopped coughing and began breathing normally. Julie slumped into my arms, and I gently placed her in an empty seat to rest, covering her with a blanket.

Having done all I could for the passengers for the moment, I decided to investigate our surroundings. I went out through the rear opening. Our chunk of the fuselage had steamrolled a nice, flat path through the wilderness, and my talon-toed boots crunched on the compressed snow as I walked. The howling wind whipped my cape around as the driven snow stung my fuzzy cheeks. It must be well below zero out here. I activated the heating elements in my armor. That would keep me from freezing to death, at least for a few hours. I began following the path back to where the plane had broken in half. From there, I could follow the trail to the forward section and see if anyone there had survived. I knew that the forward section contained a transponder that would lead search and rescue teams to it, but I wasn't overly optimistic that its signal could penetrate this storm, particularly if the storm was of unnatural origin, as Julie had said.

My eye caught a flash of something moving among the trees, something blue. I stopped and whirled to face it, and my eyes widened. It wasn't a something. It was a lot of somethings.

They were sort of like dogs, but only if you were feeling really generous. They were about the size of wolves, and they had no fur, their bodies instead covered with blue and white plates that glittered like ice and continued down their legs to four extremely large feet tipped with long, wicked claws. Their vaguely canine heads had no external ears but did have mouths filled with sharp teeth, the corners of which stretched all the way back to behind their glowing white eyes, of which they had two on each side. As they stood there, looking at me with their two pairs of eyes, it wasn't hard to guess what they were thinking. Lunchtime.

I extended the questionite steel talons on my gauntlets and dropped into a combat stance as they approached from all sides. They walked atop the snow effortlessly, not sinking in at all. I had no idea what these things were, but my armor had enough weaponry built into it to handle almost any threat short of a tank squadron. I wasn't the least bit afraid.

As three of them charged at me, I tossed a handful of sleep gas pellets, which exploded around their feet. I didn't know if they would be affected or not, but I was curious to find out. I wasn't entirely surprised when they kept right on charging, ignoring the gas. As one of them lunged at me, I slashed with my talons, cutting across its blue-and-white throat. There was no blood, only a slimy greenish fluid that smelled horrendous. The thing fell at my feet while the other two tried to sink their teeth into my arms, only to find their bites blocked by my body armor. They latched on, worrying at me the way wolves do, and I spun and threw them both away, sending them flying to land on their backs in the snow several feet from me. They sprang to their feet, growling at me, their eight white eyes blazing.

I'd won the first round, but there were a lot of these things, and while as individuals they didn't appear to be particularly strong, if they employed pack tactics like the wolves they seemed analogous to, they could bring me down with sheer numbers. I fingered the particle mines on my belt. A few of those could take out a bunch of them, but a few were all I had and they probably wouldn't get the whole pack. Better to save them as a last resort. I took out a throwing blade and held it ready, waiting for one of them to work up the courage to charge.

"Don't move," came a voice I knew all too well from off to my left. I turned my head and stared at the source. He was slightly taller and slimmer than me, wearing blue-and-black body armor. His tan-furred face was mostly covered by a pair of huge goggles that greatly magnified his eyes, and a blunt, bucktoothed muzzle similar to mine stuck out from beneath them. He was holding some kind of high-tech energy rifle, which was pointed at me.

"Dr. Sciuridae?" I gasped.

Dr. Sciuridae squinted down the aiming sight of his rifle and squeezed the trigger, letting loose a spray of energy bolts, none of which touched me. Instead, they mowed down a half-dozen of those blue dog things behind me. That was apparently enough to spook the others, as the whole pack broke and ran, disappearing into the frosted forest. Chuckling, he picked off a couple that were too slow. Then he turned to me, his buck teeth bared in a grin. "That should hold them for a while."

"What are you doing on Earth?" I asked, still astonished. Dr. Sciuridae was from a twisted parallel world called Multifaria, where almost everything that was good here was evil, and vice versa. He was that world's version of my dead brother, Simon. I'd met him several months ago on a cross-dimensional jaunt I'd taken with some other heroes, including Nightfox. He'd been a member of the Conquerors, a group of super-powered thugs led by the despotic ruler of Multifaria, Citizen Harmon, a.k.a. Shadow Destroyer, until he'd turned against his boss and helped me and the other heroes defeat him. Shadow Destroyer had ended up being sucked into the Qliphoth, where he drew his power from, but I had the sneaking suspicion I hadn't seen the last of him.

"Gee, thanks for saving me, brother," Sciuridae said, mockingly.

I glared at him. "You're not my brother, and I didn't need saving."

"Didn't look that way from where I was standing. And by the way, nice to see you, too, Alvin. Your world certainly has some interesting wildlife. What were those things?"

"I have no idea," I replied.

"You mean they weren't normal Earth creatures? Hmm." He touched his goggles and gazed down at the body of one of the dog things. "Well, that's odd!" he remarked, looking surprised.

I came over to join him. "What is?"

"No bones or muscles, no brain, no internal organs of any kind. The average jellyfish is more complex." He glanced at me. "You think these might be from the Qliphoth?"

I shrugged. "I dunno. They don't look like anything I saw when I was there. Then again, it's a big place." Realization suddenly dawned on me. "The Elysium Guard sent you!"

Sciuridae smirked. "Finally put it together, did you? Well, we can't all be geniuses. Yeah, Golden Seraph popped into my lab and told me she had a job for me. And since we all agreed to come when they called . . ."

"What about your girlfriend, Lapis Lazuli?" I asked. "She took the pledge, too."

"First," said Sciuridae, "she's not my girlfriend anymore."

"Oh," I said. "Sorry to hear that." And I actually meant it. Dr. Sciuridae and Lapis Lazuli may not have been the nicest people, but they had seemed to genuinely love each other, as much as two people like them were capable of love.

"She's my wife," he added.

I blinked. "Oh! Well, congratulations!"

"Thank you. Second, the Elysium Guard didn't send her because she's pregnant."

My jaw dropped. "Pregnant? By you?"

"Of course by me!" he snapped. "Who else would it be?"

I shrugged. "I don't know what kind of arrangements you folks have on Multifaria. I was there for less than a day, remember?"

"Yeah, I analyzed the baby's DNA," Sciuridae said. "It's definitely mine."

I nodded. "Then I'm very happy for you both." And again, I meant that.

"Thanks." He looked around, the icy wind ruffling his hair. "So, what exactly are you doing in this godforsaken wilderness?"

"I was on a plane that crashed in the storm," I replied. "I was trying to locate other survivors when those creatures attacked me."

"Well," said Sciuridae, "if there are other survivors, between this cold and those creatures, they won't last long."

"I know. We have to find the other half of the plane."

Dr. Sciuridae glanced at me. "I was sent here to investigate a possible incursion from the Qliphoth, not rescue plane crash victims."

I folded my arms. "We can't let innocent people die," I said firmly.

"You mean you can't," Sciuridae said. "I don't have that problem."

I glared at him. He may have had Simon's face, but his eyes were cold and cruel. I reminded myself that as a member of the Conquerors, he'd doubtless killed plenty of innocent people. "Did you ever think that maybe that's exactly why you were sent here?"

"Golden Seraph said the Elysium Guard is above simple morality," Sciuridae countered. "Their concern is with the fate of the cosmos. That's why she let me and Lapis Lazuli join."

"She also said there was a chance that you both might see the light someday," I reminded him.

He frowned. "Fine. It's not as if I know what I'm looking for anyway. The plane is as good as place to start as any."

I pointed along the furrow in the snow I'd been following. "I've been backtracking along this path from my half of the plane. At some point, it has to intersect with the path that leads to the other half."

Dr. Sciuridae nodded. "It'll be faster if we fly." He moved behind me, put his arms around my waist, and activated his jetpack, lifting us both up off the ground. We flew back along the furrow made by the midsection of the plane until we reached the place where it forked. The wreckage of the wings was here, and the snow had been melted by a sea of burning gasoline, which had also ignited a number of trees, turning them into towering torches. At least it made a good signal for search and rescue teams, assuming they could get through the storm.

We turned down the other path and followed it through the woods. Almost immediately, we came upon a body. Crouching over it was a blue-and-white creature, similar in appearance to the dog things that had attacked me, but humanoid, with a wide mouth full of long, sharp teeth. Those teeth were dripping with blood, and its clawed hands ripped chunks of flesh from the corpse and stuffed them into its mouth. It looked up as we approached, its white eyes blazing.

"I take it that's not a normal Earth creature either," said Sciuridae.

I shook my head. "Not even close."

The thing stood up and began loping toward us, claws raised. "Tulzorgat rises!" it hissed, grinning and giggling horribly. "The northern gods have forsaken this land! Despair and die!"

Sciuridae let go of me, unlimbered his rifle, and drew a bead on the advancing monster. I dropped onto the compressed snow and whipped out a throwing blade. The creature kept coming, showing no sign of fear. I hurled my blade, and struck it square in the chest. Greenish fluid welled up around the embedded blade, and the thing emitted an ear-splitting screech but it didn't stop. Then Sciuridae fired and blew its head off. It fell forward, green fluid pouring across the snow from its stump of a neck.

"Stupid weapon," Sciuridae scoffed, indicating my throwing blade. "Why don't you use something with real killing power?"

"Because killing isn't usually my goal," I replied sharply. I ran to the body. It was a woman, clearly one of the passengers. I couldn't tell if she'd still been alive before the thing had gotten to her. I hoped not. Sciuridae landed, keeping his gun trained on the headless body of the creature, and nudged it with the toe of his boot. It didn't move.

"Any idea who or what Tulzorgat is?" he asked.

I shook my head. "Not a clue."

"And these northern gods it mentioned?"

"The native inhabitants of northern Canada have lots of legends about gods and spirits. I'm not too familiar with them." Noticing something lying in the puddle of green fluid, I crouched down and picked it up, inspecting it as I held it between my gloved fingers.

"Looks like a bear's head," Sciuridae observed.

I nodded. "I think it might be a fetish of some sort, like a shaman or medicine man might use."

My speculation was cut short as a scream of terror reached my ears through the wind. It sounded like a man. I spun and ran in that direction, Dr. Sciuridae right behind me.

We ran together through the woods, our feet crunching in the snow, the wind howling around us. Ahead, I saw a heavyset bearded man cowering as two of the blue-white humanoid creatures stood over him, menacing him with their claws and giggling. They were sadistically toying with him, like a cat playing with a mouse. They turned as they saw us coming, and I slipped a throwing blade into my hand. Sciuridae fired at one, blowing a hole in its chest, which made it fall down. The other one raised its arms, hands clenched into fists, and Sciuridae was suddenly encased in a block of ice, completely immobilized. It looked at me, grinning. "You shall die in the frost tomb!" it said with a leer.

With my right hand, I drew a throwing blade back to my left shoulder and let it fly at the blue-white creature that had entombed Dr. Sciuridae in ice. The razor-sharp blade sliced across its throat, releasing a spray of that vile-smelling greenish fluid. Given what Sciuridae had said about how simple these creatures' anatomies were, I wasn't entirely surprised that it didn't fall. Simple organisms tend to be hard to kill. It charged at me, grinning, its gleaming claws outstretched. Fortunately, I had claws, too. I extended the questionite talons from my gauntlets and slashed at the thing as it closed with me. One swipe took its left arm off at the elbow, and another cut through its right wrist. It stood there for a moment, looking down at itself and seeming puzzled, and then lunged at me with its impossibly wide mouth, filled with insanely long teeth. I did a spinning strike, my talons slicing through its neck, and its head flew off and went rolling across the snow as its body collapsed.

I turned to Dr. Sciuridae, who was still trapped in a solid block of ice. He wouldn't last more than a minute in there. I took several hacks at the ice block with my claws, trying to be as fast and precise as I could. I needed to weaken it enough to break it apart, while avoiding harming its occupant. In about twenty seconds, I'd reduced it to about half its original mass. That would have to do. Taking a deep breath, I delivered a series of karate kicks to it, and the ice began to fracture. Then it broke apart entirely, and Sciuridae staggered forward, falling into my arms. His lips were blue, his body was shivering, and his teeth were chattering. In another minute, he would have been dead from hypothermia. I sat him down on the snow, took off my cape and hood, and wrapped them around him.

"Dude, that was awesome!" said the bearded man, sounding like one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I sighed as he ran over to join us. I'm not a big fan of southern California surfer-dude speech.

"Thanks," I said. "Have you seen any other passengers?"

The man shook his shaggy head. "No, dude, I was hunkered down in my seat when we crashed, and the plane was all like shaking and the metal was squealing, and I was sure I was headed for Nirvana. Then everything broke apart and I woke up lying on my back in the snow, and these things were standing over me and saying they were gonna eat me! My name is Mark Williams, by the way."

"Hi, Mark," I said as I lifted Sciuridae's goggles and checked his pupils. He seemed to be in a state of shock.

"I don't believe this," Mark continued. "First I get laid off from my job, then my girl leaves me, then my car gets repossessed, and now this happens! Man, if I didn't have bad luck, I'd have no luck at all!"

I gave him a hard look. "You just survived a plane crash. Shut up."

Mark swallowed, looking suitably chastized. Then he peered at Dr. Sciuridae. "Is this dude your brother?"

"No," I replied.

"He looks like your brother," Mark insisted.

"Well, he isn't. In fact, he's not even from this planet."

Mark blinked. "You mean he's, like, an alien?"

"Sort of." I patted Sciuridae's fuzzy cheeks gently. "Simon?"

His eyes focused on me, and he nodded silently.

"Can you walk?" I asked.

He nodded again and rose stiffly to his feet.

"What do we do now?" asked Mark.

I pointed at the huge furrow in the snow left by the plane's fuselage as it had skidded along the ground. "We follow that. Come on."

The three of us made our way slowly along the furrow, the icy wind howling around us and trying to drain the heat from our bodies. My costume was keeping me warm, but Mark's leather jacket wasn't much protection against the cold, and I didn't know how well insulated Dr. Sciuridae's body armor was. He couldn't have been that cold, though, since he gave my cape and hood back to me. In any case, we had to get someplace warm, fast.

After a few minutes, Mark collapsed. "Sorry, dudes, I can't go any further," he said, shivering as he knelt there in the snow, hugging himself.

I went over and helped him to his feet. "Sure you can. Just keep walking." Then I noticed Sciuridae raising his rifle and aiming it at him. "What the hell are you doing?" I demanded, moving to shield Mark with my body.

"Being merciful," Sciuridae said quietly. "Unless you'd rather we left him for those creatures."

"We're not leaving him," I said. "You fly on ahead with your jetpack. I'll carry him if I have to."

"Being in that block of ice froze my jetpack's fuel lines," Sciuridae said. "I'm grounded."

"Then go on foot. I'll be along presently."

Sciuridae smirked. "With that big tub of lard on your back and the woods crawling with those things?"

"I'll be fine. Go!"

Sciuridae looked annoyed. Perhaps he genuinely cared about me. After all, he'd also lost his brothers, and his relationship with Lapis Lazuli indicated he had at least some ability to love. Or maybe he felt indebted to me because I'd just saved his life. From my brief time in Multifaria, I'd gotten the impression that life under Citizen Harmon had been cutthroat, but in the end Sciuridae had turned against him, even if it had only been out of self-interest. Whatever the reason, he was clearly reluctant to leave.

It quickly became a moot point, as I became aware of blue-white shapes moving in the woods all around us. Sciuridae saw them too, and began backing toward me with his gun raised. "Crap!" he said. As the creatures closed in around us from all sides, I reached for the particle mines on my belt. This was starting to look like a good time for them.

At that moment, a figure came sailing out of the sky and dropped down in the middle of us. It was a man with red-blond hair, wearing a white skintight bodysuit with blue boots, gloves, belt, and a blue maple leaf insignia on the chest. His left arm and leg were cybernetic, made of bright, gleaming metal. I recognized him immediately as Justiciar, leader of the Canadian hero team Starforce.

Justiciar didn't say a word; he just swept his left arm around in an arc, a plasma beam from his hand cutting down the creatures like a scythe through wheat. Those that remained fled into the woods. He turned toward me. "Hello, Nightmunk," he said, speaking with a strong Canadian accent. "The airline said you were on the plane. I'm glad to see you survived the crash."

"So did a lot of other people, Justiciar," I said. "The midsection of the plane is about a kilometer that way." I pointed to show him the direction.

Justiciar nodded. "I homed in on the transponder in the nose section. I brought along a thermal tent for the survivors to keep warm in. LEAF personnel should be arriving shortly to provide medical assistance to the wounded. Unfortunately, this storm has grounded everything, so they're having to use snowmobiles, and with the woods full of those creatures, that could be problematic. I had to clear a bunch of them from around the nose section."

"Any idea what they are?" I asked.

"Not at the moment," Justiciar replied, "but Ravenspeaker says the storm is magical in origin, so it's a safe bet they're connected with it, somehow." He turned his eyes to Mark. "I'll take this civilian to the tent. You go back to the midsection of the plane and tell the people there that help is on the way." And with that, he put his metal arm around Mark's waist and leaped into the sky, disappearing over the treetops.

"He sure does like giving orders," Dr. Sciuridae commented.

"He's the leader of a superteam," I said. "And there are lives at stake, so he doesn't have time to screw around. Come on, let's head back to the midsection." I turned and began walking. Then I gasped as Sciuridae activated his jetpack and scooped me up, carrying me along the furrow. I looked up at him. "I thought you said you were grounded!"

He shrugged. "Fuel lines must have cleared."

We flew back along the furrow to the midsection of the plane and landed beside it. Dr. Sciuridae regarded the wreck curiously. "How often do planes on your world crash?" he asked.

"Just as often as they do on your world," I replied. "Once." I moved around to the rear of the broken fuselage, looked inside, and gasped.

It was empty.

I ran down the center aisle, frantically looking right and left. The plane was deserted except for the bodies of the four people who had been killed in the crash, which had been moved to the front. Each of the corpses was missing its head.

Dr. Sciuridae came up beside me as I stood there staring at them. "I thought you said there were other survivors," he commented.

I managed to find my voice. "There were twenty-nine people alive here when I left!"

He indicated the corpses. "Were these four decapitated in the crash?"
"No, their bodies were intact."

He looked around. "Maybe the others decided to leave."

I shook my head. "They wouldn't have done that, not in this blizzard. And even if they had, that wouldn't explain the missing heads."

"I take it you don't normally remove people's heads when they die on this world."

"No, we do not." I crouched down beside one of the corpses and examined its stump of a neck. The head had been severed cleanly, with a single cut. That would have required a sharp blade with a lot of strength behind it. "What could have done this? It wasn't those creatures. They wouldn't have left these bodies behind."

"Perhaps whatever made this," said Sciuridae, looking down at something. I rose and went over to him. In a patch of snow was an imprint of a naked human foot, about eighteen inches long. No, I realized, not quite human. The big toe was opposable, like an ape's. "There are several others scattered around," he added. "They're not all the same size, so they were clearly made by more than one pair of feet."

I stared down at the footprint. "No, it's not possible."

He looked at me. "What's not possible?"

"There have long been rumors of giant, ape-like creatures living in the north woods," I told him. "They're called sasquatches, or bigfoots. But they're a myth, a legend. They don't really exist."

Sciuridae shrugged. "Myths don't make footprints, Alvin."

I leaned back against a seat to steady myself. "This just gets weirder and weirder!"

"Well, whatever they are," said Sciuridae, "if they leave footprints, they can be followed. But we'd better move fast, before the storm erases their tracks."

I nodded and we both went outside. It didn't take us long to pick up the trail. It was also clear that the tracks were swiftly being obliterated by the storm. Sciuridae picked me up and we flew together through the woods, weaving to avoid the trees.

As we flew, I tried to make some sense out of all this in my mind. Granting for the moment that bigfoots actually existed, I had no idea what they wanted with the survivors of a plane crash. However, the headless corpses we'd found suggested it was nothing good. I was also worried about Julie, of course. She should have recovered by now, but even with her ninja skills, would she be a match for whoever had abducted her and the others? There was no way of knowing, and that scared me, especially since I now knew something I hadn't before—that we could have children.

Dr. Sciuridae landed and set me down. "The trail's gone," he said. I looked around. There were no more tracks. The storm had eaten them.

"Well, at least we know the general direction they were heading," I said.

Sciuridae shook his head. "They've changed course several times, as if they're trying to avoid being followed. There's no reason to think they won't continue to do so."

I bit my lip, embarrassed that I'd been too wrapped up in my own thoughts to notice the course changes. Then my eye caught something on the trunk of a nearby tree. I went over to examine it. There was an arrow etched into the bark, no doubt made by one of Julie's throwing blades. I grinned. Atta girl! "Come on, this way!" I called to Sciuridae, and lit off through the woods.

We had gone about three hundred yards when we came across a body. It was one of the passengers, and he was missing his head. The spray of blood across the snow told me he'd been alive when he was decapitated.

"Severed cleanly, like the others," Sciuridae observed. "They must have killed him because he couldn't keep up. Or maybe as a warning to the others. Possibly both."

I growled. Beheading corpses was one thing, but this was murder. I didn't know what they wanted the heads for, but it hardly mattered. What did matter was that Julie was in the hands of killers. They'd get no mercy from me.

We continued on, guided by the marks Julie was leaving for us. After a while, we started seeing tracks again. Apparently, these had been made recently enough that the storm hadn't erased them yet. We were getting close.

Finally, I saw something moving up ahead and motioned Sciuridae to stop. He did so, then reached up and touched his goggles. "Ape-like, you say?" he asked.

I nodded. "So I'm told."

He removed his goggles and handed them to me. "Take a look."

I put them on. As I expected, they were telescopic. Ahead, I could see several large, hairy humanoids. They stood about eight feet tall and fully upright, with powerful builds and long arms. Their hairless faces bore short tusks that jutted upward from their lower jaws. All of them carried enormous spears and stone axes. Most wore nothing but their fur, but a couple were wearing hide loincloths, leather belts with stone knives stuck in them, and moose skulls atop their heads, complete with antlers. They also had human heads dangling from their belts.

Surrounded by these creatures were the passengers from the plane, standing huddled together with blankets wrapped around them, trying to keep warm. My heart leaped when I saw Julie among the captives.

"Son of a bitch!" I whispered. "They do exist!" I handed Sciuridae back his goggles.

"So," he said, putting them back on, "shall we effect a rescue?"

I nodded. "Cover me." He hoisted his rifle as I crept forward through the snow-capped undergrowth. Fortunately, the howling wind of the storm would mask any sounds I might make.

When I was about twenty feet from the nearest bigfoot, I readied a throwing blade, took aim, and hurled it. It struck his head, and he grunted, staggered, and fell. The others all immediately looked in my direction and began hefting spears and axes. Sciuridae's energy rifle whined, and a bright white beam of hot plasma burned through one's hairy chest. At the same moment, Julie sprang into action, somersaulting through the air and ramming the heel of her foot into another's back, making him groan in pain as he fell like a tree.

I whirled toward one of the bigfoots wearing a moose skull, my throwing blade ready. He waved his hands in the air, and suddenly my vision was obscured by a swirl of snow and ice. While I've been trained to fight blind, I couldn't hear him with the wind howling in my ears, so I couldn't use sound to estimate his location, which left me helpless. Fortunately, a whine from Sciuridae's energy rifle quickly corrected the situation, and my vision returned to reveal my target lying sprawled on the ground before me, a smoking hole in his chest.

Sciuridae grinned, taking a bead on another one, then yelped as a spinning stone axe clipped the side of his head, knocking him to the ground. I hurled a throwing blade at the one who had thrown the axe, dropping him.

Seeing that Julie had taken down two more and that the rest were fleeing, I ran to Sciuridae and knelt beside him. He was unconscious, with a nasty cut across his forehead that was bleeding badly.

"Dr. Sciuridae?" asked Julie, running up beside me. "What's he doing here?"

"The Elysium Guard sent him," I replied.

"Does that mean Lapis Lazuli is here, too?"

"No, she isn't." I looked up at Julie. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she said. "I woke up about ten minutes after you left. Just after that, the bigfoots arrived. They told us to come with them, or they'd take our heads right here."

I blinked. "Told you? They speak English?"

She nodded. "English and French, as well as their own language. They said we were prisoners of the Tsiataka tribe, and if anyone showed any sign of resisting, we'd all be killed. I decided it was better to go along with them rather than risk the passengers' lives." She looked down. "They killed a man who couldn't keep up. Cut his head off as he begged for mercy. I wanted to save him, but . . ." She shuddered, hugging herself.

I took her hand in mine and squeezed it gently. "You were right not to resist, Julie. It would have endangered everyone." I stood up. "We have to get these people out of the cold."

"Uh, Alvin?" she said, looking past me at something. I turned. More big, shaggy shapes were approaching through the white murk of the storm. A lot more.

I sighed. "This day just keeps getting better."

I extended my gauntlets' questionite claws, Julie readied her collapsible metal fighting staff, and we both assumed combat stances as the huge, hairy figures came closer. The one in the lead had fur as white as fresh snow. Maybe he was a yeti? At this point I wasn't prepared to rule anything out. Behind us, the passengers whimpered fearfully, the only thing between them and those hirsute giants being a chipmunk manimal and a human girl.

"Do not be afraid," the white bigfoot said in a deep, gutteral voice. "We mean you no harm. N'ayez pas peur. Nous ne vous voulons aucun mal." He looked down at me and raised a frosty eyebrow in a surprisingly human manner. "You are a strange little creature!"

"I get that a lot," I said. "I'm Nightmunk, from Millennium City in the United States." I gestured at Julie. "This is Julie Martins."

The white bigfoot nodded. "We have heard of Millennium City. It is a place of heroes. I am Whiteclaw, chief of the Chiyetah tribe. Come, we will take you someplace warm."

"How do we know we can trust you?" I asked warily.

Whiteclaw stepped toward me. He appeared to be unarmed, and since he wasn't wearing any clothes, he had no place to conceal a weapon. "I give myself to you as a hostage. If any Chiyetah breaks the peace, you may kill me."

"I think we can trust him, Alvin," said Julie. That helped ease my suspicions. Another of a ninja's nine levels of power is jin, knowing the thoughts of others. Between that and kai, premonition of danger, I was sure this Whiteclaw could be trusted. In any case, it wasn't as though we had much choice.

Whiteclaw said something in his own language to a rusty-furred bigfoot who wore a loincloth and a moose-skull headdress, like the Tsiataka bigfoot who had blinded me with a snowstorm earlier. The other bigfoot nodded and began waving his huge hands in the air and chanting. Immediately, the wind that had been howling past us died away. I looked around in surprise. For about fifty feet in every direction, the snow-covered forest was perfectly still. Beyond that, the wind was still blowing and the branches were shaking.

"Quickly," said Whiteclaw, "before the Tsiataka return." One of the bigfoots scooped up the unconscious Dr. Sciuridae, cradling him in its massive, hairy arms like he was a child, and we all began following Chief Whiteclaw through the strangely silent forest, the oasis of calm air moving along with us.

Eventually, we arrived at a village composed of several long, thatched huts. There were more bigfoots here, including some children, who stared at us with excited curiosity, especially at me. Not surprising, since with my costume and muzzle I stood out more than anyone else. Around the village towered a number of ornately carved and painted wooden totem poles, much like those made by the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest. The bigfoots conducted us into one of the huts, where a fire was burning. It was quite warm inside, a welcome relief from the freezing cold, though the air was heavy with a strong, musky smell.

I went over to check on Dr. Sciuridae. The bigfoots had laid him down beside the fire on an animal skin, and one was smearing a blue paste over his scalp wound with a finger.

"The civilians all seem to be okay for the moment," said Julie, coming over to me. She stopped, looking down at Sciuridae and frowning. "I hope you don't expect me to heal him."

"The bigfoots appear to be taking care of that," I said. "By the way, he and Lapis Lazuli are married now."

Julie nodded. "I can't think of two people who deserve each other more."

"And they're expecting a child."

She stared at me. "A child?"

"That was my reaction, too," I said. "But it shouldn't really be surprising. He's half human, after all."

"I know. I just didn't realize humans and manimals could have children."

"Neither did I."

Further consideration of this new wrinkle in our lives would have to wait, as a bigfoot entered the hut and addressed Chief Whiteclaw excitedly in their growling, hooting tongue. "Something wrong?" I asked, as Julie and I came over to them.

Whiteclaw looked down at me. "We have a visitor."

"Hostile?" Julie asked.

The white bigfoot shook his head. "No, not hostile, but he can be something of a nuisance."

The hide covering the door of the hut swept aside, and in walked a tall Native American man wearing a carved wooden bird mask crowned with black feathers, a loincloth bearing red, white, black, and green designs, and fringed hide boots. Apart from this, his handsome, copper-skinned body was bare to the elements, which didn't seem to bother him in the slightest. I recognized him as Ravenspeaker, another member of Starforce. He grinned at Chief Whiteclaw and threw his arms wide. "Brother!" he shouted.

"Brother!" Whiteclaw roared back, and ran to Ravenspeaker, throwing his hairy white arms around the much shorter human, and they kissed passionately, which made my eyes bug out. I was absolutely not expecting this. I glanced up at Julie, who was having the same reaction.

"How are you, you big walking shag carpet?" asked Ravenspeaker, smiling and stroking the bigfoot's white-bearded face.

"Crowded," Whiteclaw replied, looking around the hut. "These are survivors from the crash of one of your damned metal birds. When are you going to start building those things so they don't fall out of the sky?"

"This one was not our fault," said Ravenspeaker. "The storm that brought it down is not a thing of nature."

Whiteclaw nodded. "Our shamans surmised as much. Walks-In-Dreams senses there is a great evil behind it, something not of this world. And the Tsiataka are once again taking heads."

Ravenspeaker frowned. "So those damned savages have broken the peace I so painstakingly negotiated?"

"Violence runs deep in their blood," Whiteclaw said solemnly. "It would take little to make them revert to their old ways."

"Shit!" snarled Ravenspeaker. "As if we don't have enough problems!" Then he fixed his eyes on me, and his smile returned. "Well, aren't you a cute little thing?"

I squirmed uneasily, as something in his voice suggested more than just a casual interest. "Hi, I'm Night—"

Ravenspeaker waved a hand dismissively. "Oh, I know who you are, Alvin. Chipmunk manimal hero from Millennium City, member of Team Nighthawk. We do keep track of these things. The question is, what are you doing here?"

"We were passengers on the plane that crashed," said Julie. "We think the storm may originate from the Qliphoth."

Ravenspeaker stiffened. "What makes you say that?"

"Julie and I have both had experience with it before," I said. "Plus, there's him." I gestured at Dr. Sciuridae, who was still lying by the fire, unconscious.

"Your brother?" asked Ravenspeaker, looking at him curiously.

"Not quite. Dr. Sciuridae is a version of my brother Simon from an alternate Earth called Multifaria, which until recently was ruled by a sorcerer named Shadow Destroyer who drew his power from the Qliphoth."

Julie spoke up. "After me, Nightmunk, Sciuridae, and some other heroes defeated Shadow Destroyer, a woman calling herself Golden Seraph offered us all membership in the Elysium Guard, an organization whose purpose is to prevent incursions from the Qliphoth into other dimensions. If Dr. Sciuridae is here on Earth, then the Qliphoth must be involved."

"What is this Qliphoth?" asked Chief Whiteclaw, looking thoroughly confused.

"Qliphoth is a Hebrew word meaning 'husks' or 'shells,'" Ravenspeaker explained. "It's the name they gave to the decaying corpse of the universe that preceded this one—a place of evil, destruction, and chaos."

"Do you know what this is?" I asked, taking a small object resembling a bear's head out of a compartment in my belt and handing it to Ravenspeaker.

He held it up before him, scrutinizing it closely. "It's an image of the demon bear, Tulzorgat." Whiteclaw gasped at the name. "Where did you get it?"

"From a blue-and-white creature that was killing crash survivors and eating them," I replied. "It said that Tulzorgat was rising and that the northern gods had abandoned this land."

"Nether demons!" said Whiteclaw, looking horrified. "They have broken out of the Frost Tomb!"

Ravenspeaker nodded grimly. "And if Tulzorgat has returned, Kigatilik will not be far behind."

"One of those nether demons also mentioned the Frost Tomb," I said. "What is that?"

"A world of eternal winter," said Ravenspeaker. "Kigatilik, his vassal Tulzorgat, and his army of nether demons were banished there by the northern gods long ago, at the end of what is now called the Pleistocene period."

"And Kigatilik is?"

"The Inuit name for the demon god of devouring cold. His banishment brought about the end of the last Ice Age." Ravenspeaker frowned. "It cannot be a coincidence that nether demons have appeared at the same time as this storm from the Qliphoth. Something from there must have freed them."

"Not something," I said. "Someone."

Julie nodded. "Shadow Destroyer. It has to be."

"But why?" asked Whiteclaw. "Why would anyone do such a thing?"

I looked up at the bigfoot. "Because he's evil. Because he glories in destruction. And because five heroes from Earth stood up to him and ended his reign of terror on Multifaria."

"With a little help from the locals," said Dr. Sciuridae. We all turned toward him. He was sitting up beside the fire, exploring the wound on his head with his fingers.

"Welcome back," I said. "How are you feeling?"

"A bit sore and dizzy," he replied. "I may also have a mild concussion. There is something deeply ironic about a technological genius being laid low by a stone axe. Still, that stuff they put on my head does seem to possess remarkable healing properties." He looked at Chief Whiteclaw. "My compliments."

"You are quite welcome, little chipmunk," the bigfoot replied.

"Did you hear all that?" I asked Sciuridae.

"I heard enough, and your conclusion that my old boss is behind this is undoubtably correct."

"So, what do we do?" asked Julie.

I grinned up at her. "We stop him, like we did before. And this time, we finish the bastard off for good!"

"And how do we do that?" Julie asked. "We don't even know where he is. And if he's in the Qliphoth, how do we reach him?"

"I know at least three people who can go there," I replied. "Witchcraft, of the Champions, and Robert Caliburn and Dr. Ka in Vibora Bay. And I suspect Ravenspeaker may also be able to." I looked up at him for confirmation.

"You are correct," said Ravenspeaker. "However, our first priority is putting an end to this storm. Its power is increasing at an alarming rate. By tomorrow, it will be tearing up trees by their roots!"

"And just how are we supposed do that?" Dr. Sciuridae asked, getting to his feet. "We're only three people, and none of us has any actual superpowers. Stopping a rogue blizzard is a bit out of our league."

"My mystical senses tell me the source of the storm is the Frost Tomb," said Ravenspeaker. "Tulzorgat is the key to that place, and I think I know where he is hiding."

I nodded. "So let's go get him."

Ravenspeaker grinned. "Simple and direct. I like it!"

"The Chiyetah will safeguard these humans while you are gone," said Whiteclaw, gesturing to the passengers. "No harm will come to them while life remains in our bodies."

Ravenspeaker clapped the white bigfoot on his shaggy shoulder. "Thank you, brother." Then they kissed again, eliciting a surprised look from Dr. Sciuridae, who hadn't seem them display affection for each other before, and Ravenspeaker pushed aside the hide flap covering the door of the hut and went out into the storm, with Julie, Dr. Sciuridae, and me following.

The storm was noticeably worse than it had been when we'd entered the hut, and the few bigfoots still outside in the Chiyetah village looked frightened. The thatching on their huts was being ripped off in clumps, and the big totem poles were shaking. Ravenspeaker turned to us, shouting to be heard over the howling wind. "I will do what I can to hold back the storm! There is a circle of stones a kilometer due south of here! Go there and recite this incantation!" He spoke a series of words in a language I didn't recognize. We all repeated it. "Be warned, you will encounter fierce opposition from Tulzorgat's servants!"

I nodded, holding my hood with one hand against the wind. "What about the big guy himself? Any advice?"

"Be careful!" shouted Ravenspeaker. "He is a bear! Bears are always dangerous!"

I'd fought enough bear manimals in the fight pits on Monster Island to know that was true. I nodded again.

Ravenspeaker closed his eyes, spread his arms, and began chanting, and a ghostly version of himself expanded out of his body, growing in size until it was well over fifty feet tall. It stood there, towering over the village, its stance exactly the same as the real Ravenspeaker's. The wind began to subside, lessening until it was just slightly weaker than the worst blizzard I'd ever been in before today. Julie, Dr. Sciuridae, and I looked at each other and set off to the south.

We trekked along through the winter forest, snow swirling around us. Sciuridae refrained from using his jetpack, since he couldn't carry both of us and he also wanted to conserve its fuel. The wind had that bitter, biting cold that causes any exposed flesh to feel raw. Thanks to the facial fur and leathery nosepads granted to us by our chipmunk DNA, Sciuridae and I were less bothered by it than a human would have been, but Julie's cheeks and nose were bright red. Even so, she didn't display any signs of discomfort. In fact, she seemed to be moving faster than we were, though that may have partly been simply because she was taller and had longer legs. I guessed her ninja mind-over-body discipline was helping her ignore the cold. I found myself thinking again about the possibility of having children with her. Ever since I'd found out that Dr. Sciuridae and Lapis Lazuli were expecting a baby, the idea had been buzzing around in the back of my head.

We emerged from the forest onto a rocky ridge, and there stood the circle of stones Ravenspeaker had mentioned. There were five of them—rough oblong objects of varying heights, the tallest slightly shorter than Julie. They looked as old as the world. One could almost have mistaken them for a natural formation, save that each stone had some sort of rune etched on it, a combination of lines and circles. I had no idea what they meant.

"I guess we stand in the center?" I asked.

Julie shrugged. "Ravenspeaker didn't say, so I don't know if it matters."

"If it did," said Dr. Sciuridae, "he probably would have mentioned it."

"Good point," I said. I walked up to the edge of the circle and uttered the incantation Ravenspeaker had taught us. Nothing happened.

Sciuridae shook his head. "You're doing it wrong."

"What do you mean, I'm doing it wrong?" I asked, looking crossly at him. "I repeated the words just as he said them. I am a detective, you know. I pay attention to details."

"He used different intonations," Sciuridae insisted.

"He did not!" I retorted.

"Well, it's not working, so you're clearly doing something wrong!"

"Oh my god!" said Julie, rolling her eyes. "What is this, sibling rivalry? Let Sciuridae try, Alvin!"

"Fine!" I grumped, standing to one side with my arms folded.

"Thank you!" said Dr. Sciuridae, striding up to the stones. He repeated the incantation, sounding no different to my ears from the way I'd said it, save that his speaking voice has a slightly lower pitch than mine. Immediately, the space in the center of the stones seemed to twist and warp, and there was a shimmering sphere floating in the air among them. A second later, a dog-like nether demon leaped out of it, pouncing on Dr. Sciuridae and knocking him on his back in the snow as he squeaked with surprise.

Julie and I reacted instantly, me plunging my claws into the thing's back while Julie stuck her fighting staff between its jaws, preventing it from closing them around Sciuridae's throat. The dog-thing yelped as my claws pierced its blue-and-white flesh, releasing a flood of that horrible-smelling green liquid, and it collapsed atop Sciuridae. He made a disgusted sound and pushed it off, getting to his feet.

"Damn!" said Julie. "When Ravenspeaker said we'd encounter fierce opposition, he meant it! That thing must have been waiting just inside!"

I nodded. "Which means there could be more waiting for us."

"I expect there are," said Sciuridae. He operated a sliding bolt on his rifle, and a small object popped out of the front and flew through the portal. Then he did a quick sidestep. A moment later, an explosive blast of flame gushed out of the portal, melting the snow for about twenty feet in front of it.

"I didn't know you had a grenade launcher on that thing," I commented.

Sciuridae grinned at me, buck teeth gleaming. "There are very few problems that can't be solved by the measured application of high explosives." He ran to the portal and jumped through. Julie and I followed him.

We found ourselves in an ice cave whose blue walls were streaked with black. Bits and pieces of several nether demons were scattered around the floor, and the air was thick with acrid smoke. There was a shimmering hole in the wall behind us and two tunnels leading off from the cave.

"Looks like you were right, Alvin," said Julie.

I nodded. "And it looks like the good doctor saved us a fight. Unfortunately, he also alerted everything in these caves to our presence."

Sciuridae chuckled. "That was going to happen eventually anyway. So, which tunnel?"

I glanced up at Julie. "Any ninja intuition?"

She shook her head. "Afraid not."

"In that case," said Sciuridae, "let's try that one." He pointed at one of the tunnels, and we all began moving down it.

The tunnel snaked along for a hundred yards or so and eventually emptied out into a large ice-walled chamber. It contained several dozen nether demons, which were all standing there waiting for us. They charged at us, snarling and howling.

"Fall back!" I shouted, and we withdrew into the tunnel, using it as a choke point, Sciuridae hosing the demons down with plasma bolts to cover our retreat. They seemed utterly without fear, however, and kept on coming, climbing over the bodies of their fellow demons to try to reach us.

"How many shots does that thing have?" I asked Sciuridae.

"I doubt it's as many as there are of them," he replied, mowing down some more.

"Then I think a change of tactics is called for," I said. "Quick, back the way we came!"

Julie and Dr. Sciuridae ran back toward the entrance, and I followed them after dropping four particle mines for the demons to set off. I covered my ears as they detonated, and the tunnel collapsed behind me, cutting off pursuit. We were safe, for the moment. Then, a low, deep, groaning rumble filled the tunnel, followed by a snuffling sound.

"Tulzorgat?" asked Julie.

"Sounds like a bear to me," I said. "I guess we got his attention."

"Well, there's only one more tunnel," said Dr. Sciuridae.

We went back to the entrance cave and headed down the other tunnel.

The tunnel twisted and turned for a while until it opened into another ice-walled chamber even larger than the previous one. The chamber was filled with darkness, and I don't mean just the absence of light. It was a tangible thing, an inky miasma that moved, ebbing and flowing, as though something inside were disturbing it. A wheezing sound like a giant bellows filled our ears, and the air reeked with the sickening, rancid odor of decay.

There was also a human boy.

He looked to be about twelve years old, with short brown hair that hung into his green eyes. He was wearing a light green sleeveless collared shirt with a V-shaped opening in the front, dark green trousers, and big fur boots with criss-crossing leather straps. There was a black leather belt around his waist with a bronze buckle, and a leather pouch on his left hip. On his narrow shoulders sat a fur mantle, and a yellow cape secured to a pair of gold medallions on his chest linked by a short gold chain hung down his back beneath it, ending in a scalloped trailing edge. His forearms were encased in sleek, gleaming metal bracers that went up to his elbows, and his hands were covered by fingerless black leather gloves. He was sitting inside a glowing purple cage to the left of the entrance, regarding us curiously as we entered. "What manner of creatures be you?" he asked, sounding intrigued and not the least bit concerned about his present circumstances.

"We're heroes," I replied, staring at the strange youth.

"Speak for yourself," said Dr. Sciuridae.

"Heroes, eh?" the boy said, with a mocking grin. "'Twould seem they grow their heroes passing small here!" His gaze fixed on Julie. "Though you look to be of a more suitable stature."

"You're hardly one to talk, junior," Julie replied sardonically. "Mind telling us who you are?"

The boy shrugged. "I am a prisoner of the beast of this cave."

"You mean Tulzorgat?" I asked.

"If that is the creature's name."

"And how did you come to be here?"

He shrugged again. "I entered as I suppose you did, through yon circle of stones."

"Did Ravenspeaker send you?" Julie asked.

The boy shook his head. "I know not this Ravenspeaker. I entered on my own."

"How did you know the incantation to get in?" asked Sciuridae suspiciously.

"'Twas plain to read upon the rocks, for one schooled in such things."

I remembered the strange runes carved on the stones, and folded my arms. The boy's attitude was starting to grate on me. "Do you often walk into the lairs of demon bears?" I asked.

The boy grinned. "When the mood striketh me. I am a creature of whim."

Our conversation was interrupted by a deep growl from the darkness and the sound of something enormous moving. Dr. Sciuridae raised his rifle, I extended my talons, and Julie readied her fighting staff.

Four gigantic claws appeared out of the darkness, each one as long as I was tall. They lay upon the floor of the cave and drew back slowly, leaving deep rents in the ice as they scraped along. A pair of burning yellow eyes appeared behind them, glaring at us balefully, followed by a set of sharp, gleaming white teeth, floating there in the blackness with saliva dripping from them. The teeth spread apart and a titanic roar hit us like a sonic sledgehammer, knocking us off our feet and making us choke with its vile stench.

"Methinks the beast is hungry," the boy observed mildly.

"Then he can chew on this!" Sciuridae snarled, aiming his rifle and firing a burst of plasma bolts into the darkness. Tulzorgat growled and lumbered forward, emerging from the shadows. He was jet black and the size of an elephant, far bigger than the giant cave bears that had roamed this land millennia ago. Those had been mainly herbivorous, but there was no question as to Tulzorgat's diet. He lunged at Sciuridae, who jumped back, and his huge jaws snapped shut only inches short of him. Julie sprang forward and slammed her staff down on the monster's nose, causing his glowing eyes to go wide. He grunted and rose onto his hind legs, towering over us, his front paws rubbing his snout. Then his eyes narrowed and he roared with pure ursine fury, his massive claws hanging in the air before him like giant gleaming daggers. I'd never seen anything so terrifying.

Swallowing my fear, I darted in and slashed at his belly with my claws. He howled and took a swipe at me, his enormous paw scooping me up and hurling me against the wall of the cave, which I struck with a crunching impact that left me stunned. Sciuridae sprayed him with hot plasma, which drew his attention, giving Julie an opening to leap onto his back and smack him on the head with her staff. The demon bear roared in pain and slammed his shoulders against the roof of the cave, trying to crush her, but Julie jumped off his back, landing nimbly on the ground behind him. He whirled with surprising speed toward her, only to be hit from behind by a grenade from Dr. Sciuridae, which made him bellow with rage.

I got unsteadily to my feet. We were certainly making Tulzorgat angry, but we didn't seem to be hurting him all that much. He was a supernatural creature, and I wasn't sure how much purely physical attacks could affect him. I glanced at the strange boy sitting in his cage a few feet away from me, who was watching the battle with amused interest. Tulzorgat had to be keeping him caged for a reason. He'd hinted that he knew something about magic, and that was what we needed if we were going to defeat the demon bear. Of course, I didn't know if we could trust him, having no idea who he was, but I also didn't see that we had much choice. I ran over and slashed at the bars of his cage with my questionite claws, and they shattered, freeing him.

"I was wondering when thou wouldst do that," the boy said, grinning as he got to his feet.

"You might have said something," I growled.

"And miss such excellent sport?" He laughed and began weaving glowing patterns in the air with his fingers. "Turn, demon of darkness!" the boy shouted at Tulzorgat. "'Tis no mere mortal hero who stands before thee now! Thou facest Loki Odinson, prince of Asgard, master of magic!" A polygon composed of glowing threads flew from the boy's hand, striking the gigantic black bear directly in his chest and making him roar with anger.

"Well, that sure pissed him off," I commented.

"Such was my intent, mortal," Loki replied, gesturing as Tulzorgat bore down on us like a freight train, charging across the cave on all fours and making the ground shake. All at once, the demon bear seemed to go into slow motion as purple crystals appeared in the air around him. I'd seen Robert Caliburn, Earth's archmage, cast this spell before. He'd called it the Sigils of Ebon Weakness. Apparently, it was common knowledge among practitioners of magic, so if Loki was a sorcerer, it made sense that he'd know it, too. "Strike now, heroes," he shouted, "while the beast is vulnerable!"

Julie, Sciuridae, and I needed no urging. We all laid into Tulzorgat while he was moving as if he were immersed in molasses—blasting, bashing, slashing savagely, making the most of the opening Loki had provided for us. Tulzorgat groaned, clearly hurting now, and took a swipe at Loki, his massive claws striking the boy and tearing through his shirt and into the flesh beneath. I would have expected him to be disemboweled by such a blow, but it only left several bleeding gashes across his chest, which, while they looked painful, also appeared fairly superficial. We kept pouring it on, and with another agonized groan, Tulzorgat collapsed to the floor of the cave and lay still. As we stood around him, panting, his immense shaggy form faded and vanished, presumably returning to whatever nightmare realm it had come from.

"Od's blood!" Loki exclaimed, grinning triumphantly. "Was ever a battle fought against a more formidable foe? I say you nay! Yet, we prevailed! Well done, mortals! Small ye may be, but clearly lacking not in skill, nor courage! The son of Odin salutes you!"

"You're hurt," said Julie, indicating the gashes on the boy's chest.

Loki glanced down at himself. "Indeed, I am. In the thick of the battle I scarce noticed." He reached into the leather pouch on his hip and sprinkled what looked like gold dust on his chest. Immediately, the gashes sealed up. Even his shirt was fixed.

"What's that?" asked Sciuridae, looking intrigued.

"Ground-up golden apples of Idunn," Loki replied. "Useful for such trifling wounds."

Julie blinked. "I thought those granted eternal youth!"

"Nay," said Loki, "they restore youth. And what is healing but the return of the flesh to its previous state?"

"Well, at least now we know why Tulzorgat put you in that cage," I said.

"The beast did not cage me," Loki replied. "That was done by another, a wizard of no mean skill, as he would have to be an he imprison a prince of Asgard."

My eyes widened. "Shadow Destroyer?"

"I know not his name," said Loki.

"Was he wearing purple armor with a gold helmet and cape?" asked Julie.

Loki shook his head. "Nay, he wore no such accoutrements. I shall display his countenance." He waved his hands in the air, and before him appeared an image of a tall, thin man with a long, saturnine face, black hair that fell past his shoulders, and a handlebar mustache that wouldn't have looked out of place on a silent movie villain. He was dressed in a dark gray jacket and slacks and a red turtleneck sweater. His fingernails were long and clawlike.

I gasped. "Rakshasa!"

"Who?" asked Dr. Sciuridae, looking puzzled.

"Doctor Destroyer's spymaster," I explained. "He disappeared after Destroyer supposedly died in 1992, but recently he's started showing up again."

Sciuridae regarded the image intently. "He looks pretty good for someone who has to be, what, sixty years old?"
"I don't know if he's actually human," I said. "He's been around since the 1950s and he doesn't seem to have aged in all that time."

"Rakshasa are demons from Hindu mythology," said Julie. "They're supposed to be powerful sorcerers and able to change their shapes at will. Maybe that's really what he is."

"Hold a moment," said Loki, dispelling the image. "Is Doctor Destroyer also this Shadow Destroyer thou mentioned?"

I shook my head. "No, they're two different people. Doctor Destroyer is a villain of this world. Shadow Destroyer is a sorcerer from a world called Multifaria, the same place he comes from." I indicated Dr. Sciuridae.

Sciuridae nodded. "He used to be in charge there, before we dethroned him."

"And he used to work for him," said Julie, giving Sciuridae a dour look. "Shadow Destroyer was holding Doctor Destroyer prisoner in Multifaria, but we freed him and he helped us defeat Shadow Destroyer."

"But who is Rakshasa working for," asked Sciuridae, "your Destroyer or mine?"

"That's an excellent question," I said.

"Verily!" said Loki. "'Tis a puzzle to challenge e'en an Asgardian mind!"

I rolled my eyes. His ego was really starting to annoy me. "Well, we're not going to find the answer here. Come on, let's blow this popsicle stand." I began heading back toward the exit.

"Popsicle?" asked Loki, looking confused as he followed me.

"It's a frozen confection on a stick," Julie explained.

"Hmm, an amusing idea. By the by, I would know thy names, so the skalds can say who fought beside me when they sing of this battle."

"I'm Nightmunk," I said. "This is Nightfox, and that's Dr. Sciuridae."

Loki laughed. "The skalds shall be sore pressed to find a rhyme for 'sciuridae'!"

Julie leaned over and whispered in my ear as we walked. "Do you think he really is Loki?"

I shrugged. "At this point, I'm prepared to believe anything. He's clearly no ordinary human. He survived a hit from Tulzorgat that would have killed a normal person."

"But that would mean that all of Norse mythology is real!"

"Why not? We've both encountered weirder things. Like, today."

"But in the myths Loki was an adult, so how can he be a child?"

"Maybe he ate too many of those golden apples. Or maybe he's disguising himself. Or maybe he's lying through his teeth. Take your pick."

"Well, he is the god of deception, trickery, and mischief," said Julie.

I looked up at her. "You seem pretty knowledgeable about this stuff."

She giggled. "I wrote a report on the Norse gods in high school."

"Any suggestions regarding Loki?"

She nodded. "Don't turn your back on him."

We both looked back at Loki, who was strolling along the tunnel behind us, hands clasped behind him, whistling and looking as innocent as possible. Dr. Sciuridae was walking just behind, watching him like a hawk.

We reached the portal and passed through it back into the normal world. Immediately, we were hit by a wall of freezing, hurricane-force wind that caused icicles to form in the fur on my cheeks and muzzle.

"Odin's beard!" cried Loki. "The storm hath grown worse!" I noticed that the cold didn't seem to bother him in the least.

"Much worse." I said. "This could be a catastrophe for the whole region."

"It already is!" came Ravenspeaker's voice from behind us. We all turned toward him. He was standing near the stones, with that giant ghostly version of himself towering above us. He looked down at Loki curiously. "Who's the kid?"

"We seem to have picked up an Asgardian," I replied.

"Loki Odinson," Loki clarified. "Prince of Asgard!"

"Whatever," said Ravenspeaker. "The Chiyetah have abandoned their village and taken the humans to shelter in a cave. I am trying to hold back the storm, but it keeps getting stronger. We are running out of time!"

"We defeated Tulzorgat," said Julie.

Ravenspeaker nodded. "I know. I felt him leave this world. The way to the Frost Tomb is now open."

"We also found out Rakshasa is involved," I added.

Ravenspeaker blinked. "That sick bastard? This is worse than I thought! You must enter the Frost Tomb now!" He reached into one of his medicine pouches and took out three small carved wooden trinkets on leather cords. "You will need these. No mortal can enter the Frost Tomb without being frozen solid." He glanced at Loki. "I'm afraid I have none for you."

Loki smiled. "I fear no cold."

Ravenspeaker shrugged. "Your funeral." He gestured, and a spinning spiral like a tiny galaxy appeared in the air before him. "Put on the charms and go through. Good luck!"

Sighing, I put the leather cord over my head, took a deep breath, and charged into the spinning spiral.

I emerged into one of the strangest places I've ever seen, and I've been to the Qliphoth. I was standing on a smooth sheet of ice. The air was misty and cold, and when I looked up I saw an enormous vortex swirling above me. Circling inside it were rocks, trees, and all manner of debris. There were also animals, which puzzled me, since nothing was supposed to be able to live in here. Maybe they were the spirits of animals. I saw a bear running in the air against the wind but making no headway. In the distance, I could see floating islands drifting about in the gray murk. My ears were filled with a sound like a thousand owls hooting. Julie stepped out of the spinning spiral a moment later, followed by Dr. Sciuridae and Loki, and we all stood there, taking in our surroundings.

"So, this is the Frost Tomb," said Sciuridae.

"Od's blood!" exclaimed Loki. "This place reminds me of Niflheim!"

"What's that?" asked Sciuridae.

"The Norse realm of the dead," Julie replied, "a world of ice and darkness ruled by Hel, goddess of death. It's where Vikings who don't die heroically in battle end up."

Loki grinned at her. "Thou knowest much about my homeland, mortal."

"Isn't Hel supposed to be your daughter?" Julie asked.

Dr. Sciuridae almost choked. "His daughter?"

"We've got company," I said, popping my claws. Ahead of us, a dozen or so cadaverous figures were emerging from the mist and shambling toward us. A couple of them were headless, but that didn't seem to bother them. They advanced with their hands raised menacingly, the ones who had mouths moaning.

"They look like something out of a George Romero movie!" said Julie.

"I don't know what they are," I said, "but they clearly aren't friendly."

"Then let's get rid of them," said Sciuridae. He leveled his rifle and fired a grenade that landed in their midst, detonated, and tossed their emaciated bodies through the air, tearing off arms, legs, and heads in the process. The dismembered limbs and torsos continued wriggling gruesomely on the ground, and the severed heads continued groaning.

"Good old-fashioned nightmare fuel," I commented.

"More doth approach," said Loki, readying a spell.

More were indeed doth approaching, a lot more, and behind them towered gray figures wearing loincloths, hide boots, and moose-skull helmets. One of these raised his arm, and from his clenched fist he fired a bolt of ice, which Julie narrowly dodged.

"Nightfox and I will keep the zombies busy!" I shouted, charging toward them. "Sciuridae, you and Loki take out the ones with the antlers!"

"On it!" said Dr. Sciuridae, blasting one of them with his rifle, while Loki hurled a mystic bolt at another. I laid into the zombies with my claws, hacking and slashing, sending limbs flying everywhere without spilling a drop of blood. They appeared to be nothing but dessicated corpses. Julie was right beside me, spinning and slamming with her staff. Within a minute, the ice field was strewn with writhing, twitching body parts.

"Feh!" spat Loki, disgusted, surveying the battlefield. "These creatures present no challenge! Where is Rakshasa? I would fain mete out vengeance upon him for having the arrogance to imprison a prince of Asgard!"

Sciuridae looked at him. "Do all you Asgardians talk like you're in a Shakespeare play?"

Loki grinned back. "Wouldst thou rather I spoke in the dull, colorless manner you favor, snouted one?"

"I'd rather you didn't talk at all," Sciuridae sneered, "but I don't suppose there's any chance of that happening."

"We came here to do a job, people," I reminded them. "Let's do it and not argue among ourselves, hmm?"

Loki nodded. "Verily, Nightmunk speaketh wisely. Let us concentrate upon the task at hand."

"Thanks," I said. "Sciuridae, get some altitude and use those telescopic goggles of yours to search the area."

"Right," he said, and activated his jetpack. Nothing happened. He flicked the switch several times, growling in annoyance.

"Is thy device faulty?" Loki asked, looking smug.

"I think the fuel line's frozen," Sciuridae growled.

"Again?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

He glared at me. "It's cold in here!"

Loki folded his arms, smirking. "Mechanisms! A poor substitute for a stout sword and a strong arm!"

"I don't see any sword in your hand, stout or otherwise!" Sciuridae snarled at him.

Loki shrugged. "I have no need of one, nor do I require some contrivance to fly. I am a sorcerer." He turned to me. "With thy permission, leader?"

I nodded. "By all means."

Loki cast a spell and rose into the air, purple lights swirling around him, and then wrapped his arms around Dr. Sciuridae's waist and carried him up into the gray sky.

"Loki's being awfully obsequious," Julie commented, looking up at them.

"Yeah, I noticed that," I replied.

"Don't be fooled by it."

"Don't worry, I'm not."

They flew back down a moment later, landing before us. "There's an island in the ice 316 meters that way," said Sciuridae, pointing.

Loki nodded. "And potent magic is being worked there. I can feel it."

"Sounds like that's our target," I said. "Let's go!" I took off across the ice with Julie and Dr. Sciuridae following me and Loki flying along just above our heads.

After a few minutes, the island became visible through the mist. It was a small, rocky affair, no bigger than a baseball diamond, with a bonfire burning at the center of it. Before the fire stood Rakshasa, waving his hands in the air and chanting. As we approached, I could start making out his words. He was speaking in a soft, playful, sing-song voice, sounding like Vincent Price reciting a nursery rhyme. "You've slept in the Frost Tomb for too long, Kigatilik. Wake u-u-u-u-up!" he said, as though he were addressing a child who would be late for school. Then his voice suddenly changed, becoming diabolical and ferocious. "And bring cataclysm to this land!"

Rakshasa noticed us and turned around, grinning like a Cheshire cat and returning to his sing-song voice. "You're too late, heroes. Kigatilik is awakening." Then his voice became a poisonous hiss. "And there's nothing you can do about it!" He laughed—a hearty, sinister cackle.

"We'll see about that!" I said, hurling a throwing blade at him. Rakshasa caught it with one claw-fingered hand and threw it back at me. I deflected it with my gauntlet, and it went skittering across the ice.

Rakshasa turned his attention to Loki. "You again, little godling? I'd have thought you would have slunk back to Asgard after our last encounter. Clearly, you need a further lesson in who is the greater sorcerer!" He raised his arms, and writhing, glowing, pink tendrils like giant worms rose out of the ground all around us and began spitting globs of the same glowing pink. One of them hit my shoulder, and I felt a shock of psychic pain. My armored costume was useless against this.

I slashed at one of the worms, slicing it in half. It vanished, but there were a dozen more, and every time one of those globs hit me, it was as if it were devouring a piece of my mind. I felt numb and sluggish and had difficulty focusing my attention. Sciuridae was blasting at them, and Julie was laying into them with her staff, but I could see that they were hurting too. Meanwhile, overhead, Loki cast a spell and suddenly there were a dozen of him flying around up there. The worms began spitting at all the Lokis, and each time a glob hit one, a Loki vanished, but at least it was taking their attention away from the rest of us. I weaved among the worms, feeling my vigor returning, and bore down on Rakshasa.

Rakshasa looked nonplussed, standing there twiddling his mustache between a thumb and forefinger. He clearly hadn't been expecting this much resistance. As I ran up to him, he snarled, baring fangs, and pounced on me, slashing with his clawlike nails. Those nails scraped across my chest, leaving deep scratches in armor that could stop high-velocity bullets. I jabbed my talons into his belly, and he gasped and staggered back, clutching his middle and glaring at me hatefully. "You miserable . . . little . . . rat!" he hissed.

"You say that like it's a bad thing," I said, grinning at him. "I've known plenty of fine rats." I advanced toward him, talons raised.

Rakshasa was hardly down for the count, though. He leaped at me again, knocking me down, and began slashing at me furiously, tearing gashes in my armor. He lunged at my throat, his fangs seeking my jugular, and I had to shove my left gauntlet under his chin to keep him from reaching it. His strength was inhuman. I could only keep him at bay for a few seconds. Fortunately, Julie came to my rescue, slamming her staff down across his back and making him howl in pain. He jumped off me and slashed at her, and she backed away, parrying with her staff while I got to my feet. Then a blast of hot plasma from Dr. Sciuridae hit him and sent him reeling back, his jacket in flames, and Loki followed up with a mystical bolt from the air.

"The villain doth quail!" shouted Loki, grinning as he flew down to join us. "Let us finish him, mortals! Show him the folly of opposing a prince of Asgard and his stalwart allies!"

Julie smirked. "So now this is Loki and his Amazing Friends?"

"Screw that!" growled Sciuridae, blasting Rakshasa again, and the sorcerer, or demon, or whatever he was, groaned and collapsed to the ground.

"Good work," I said, panting. "All of you."

"I hope that did the trick," said Julie, "because I don't think I could take another fight like that."

Sciuridae nodded. "First that bear, and now this guy, not to mention the nether demons and the bigfoots. I'm done."

"Same here," I said. "Let's get out of here." I went over to Rakshasa and bound his hands behind his back with a zip tie, and Julie picked him up and hoisted him over her back in a fireman's carry. With our prize thus secured, we headed back toward the spinning spiral.

The moment we returned to the normal world, one thing was immediately obvious—the storm had ceased. All around us lay silent wilderness. The ground was littered with windblown debris. The air was as sharp and cold as a knife, and the sky was as bright as the eye of a cat.

Ravenspeaker was waiting for us, a big white grin on his dark face beneath the protruding beak of his bird mask. His giant ghostly duplicate was also gone. "You got him! Soupah, just soupah! Sit and rest a while. I just called my friends at Steelhead Division. A chopper should be here to pick us up shortly. You did great work!"

I nodded. Steelhead Division was the branch of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that dealt with superpowered threats, their equivalent to PRIMUS—the Paranormal Research and Investigation Mission of the United States. I'd worked with them a couple of times before, since Windsor, Ontario, is just across the Detroit River from Millennium City, and more than one supervillain wanted in the U.S. has skipped over there to elude capture. I sat down on a rock and rested.

"So, did we win?" Julie asked.

I shrugged. "The storm's gone."

"Yeah, but Rakshasa said Kigatilik was awakening and that there was nothing we could do about it."

"Rakshasa has been known to lie," I said.

Loki looked down at him. "He is clearly a villain and a knave."

Julie folded her arms and smirked. "Oh, like you can talk!"

Loki gave her a hurt look. "Have I given thee any reason for distrust, fair maiden? Hath not Loki been a true and loyal ally, followed orders faithfully, fought alongside thee, even shed his own blood? God I may be, but still, my heart can be wounded!"

Dr. Sciuridae clapped. "Bravo! A stellar performance, worthy of The Merchant of Venice!" He struck a hammy pose. "'Hath not a god eyes? If you prick us, do we not bleed?' Did you take the form of a child because you thought it would get people to trust you more and see you as less of a threat?"

Loki's green eyes flashed. "I know not of what thou speakest, Doctor, but thine intent is plain. You dare much to mock a prince of Asgard!"

"Oh, can it, Loki!" Sciuridae sneered. "I haven't bought one word of the bullshit you've been selling! If you're a god, I'm Queen Victoria! Besides, aren't you Vikings supposed to admire boldness and courage?"

"Aye," said Loki, "but we also demand respect!" He began readying a spell, and Sciuridae unslung his rifle and leveled it at him.

"Gentlemen!" said Ravenspeaker soothingly. "Haven't you both done enough fighting for one day?"

The pair appeared to calm down. "'Tis true," Loki admitted, "Loki hath drunk his fill of battle. For now." He glared balefully at Sciuridae, who returned his look with equal malice. I sighed. While Dr. Sciuridae was the closest thing I had left to a brother, I didn't relish the idea of getting between him and a Norse god.

Further conversation was prevented by the approach of a helicopter bearing a maple leaf insignia. It settled down on the rocky ridge beside us and we all climbed aboard, bringing Rakshasa along. Loki looked around the helicopter's interior in amazement. "Verily, this flying chariot is a marvel!" he shouted over the noise of the rotors. "'Tis a trifle hard on one's ears, though!" One of the Steelhead soldiers showed him how to put on a headset.

"Oh, we have stuff much more impressive than this," said Julie.

I nodded. "Yeah, helicopters have been around for more than half a century."

"Lay on!" said Loki, grinning excitedly. "I am keen to see!"

The chopper took off, and we laid on above the snowy landscape with a god on board.

Force Station Steelhead was a base nestled deep in the Canadian wilderness, consisting of several metallic domes and towers in a complex surrounded by a fifteen-foot-high steel wall. In one corner sat a large helipad with stairs leading down. It was upon this that our helicopter set down. Two Steelhead Peacekeepers in dull gray powered armor took Rakshasa into custody while the rest of us descended the stairs to the snow-covered ground. Loki looked around the compound at all the Steelhead soldiers in their camouflage parkas going about their business, and frowned. "Is this any way to greet triumphant heroes?" he complained. "Where be the wine and women? Why be skalds not singing our praises while children shower us with flower petals?"

"Oh, good grief!" groaned Dr. Sciuridae.

"It's the middle of winter," I explained. "There are no flowers, hence no flower petals to shower us with."

Julie spoke up. "There are also no children or skalds here. And the women work alongside the men as equals."

Loki shook his head. "'Tis very strange." Then he glanced at the rest of us. "Though I am allied with a woman, a man dressed as a bird, and a pair of talking rodents."

"Get ready for another shock," I said, nodding toward an approaching figure. It was Justiciar, his cybernetic arm and leg gleaming in the bright sunlight. He waved to us, and we all waved back, save for Loki, who was staring at him, wide-eyed.

"Odin's beard!" he exclaimed. "That man is half machine!"

I nodded. "David Burrell was injured in a mountain-climbing accident, so his father got a villain named Cyberlord to 'fix' his son. Now he's Justiciar, leader of Canada's top superhero team, Starforce."

"Good to see you all made it here safely," Justiciar said, smiling. Then his smile faded and he stared down at Loki. "Where'd you find the kid in the Viking costume?"

"That's a long story, Dave," I replied. "Is there someplace we could go to relax? It's been a day."

Ravenspeaker clapped me on the shoulder. "I'll show you all to the lounge, then come back and give our fearless leader a full report."

"Thanks," I said. "Much appreciated."

"You've earned it," said Ravenspeaker. He led us toward the entrance to one of the domes, and we went inside.

The interior of Force Station Steelhead was all cold, cheerless steel corridors with Steelhead personnel walking along them, most of whom didn't pay the slightest attention to our strange company. Ravenspeaker escorted us down a corridor and through a pair of double doors, which opened into a large room full of tables and chairs with a bar that was serving Molson, Labatt, and Moosehead on tap, as well as several brands of American beer. There were some video games and pinball machines, a jukebox, a piano, and neon signs on the walls advertising various beers. The occupants were mostly Steelheads, but there were also some volunteers from LEAF—the Logistical Emergency Assistance Foundation, which handled crisis situations all over Canada—and a few of the passengers from the plane. A popular Canadian rock tune played over the sound system.

"This likes me well!" said Loki, looking around and grinning.

"Hey, dudes, how ya doing?" came a voice I'd hoped I'd never hear again. It was my old buddy Mark, and he was getting up and coming over to join us, a mug of beer in his hand. Yay.

I shrugged. "Fought a demon bear and a supervillain. Pretty ordinary day." I gestured at Julie. "This is Julie Martins, from the plane," then at Loki, "and Loki Odinson, from Asgard. Folks, this is Mark Williams. Dr. Sciuridae and I saved him from being eaten by nether demons."

"Yeah, thanks again for that, dudes," said Mark. Then he stared at Loki. "Are you really Loki from Asgard?"

Loki nodded, his eyes fixed on Mark's mug of beer. "I am, and the drink thou holdest would appear to be ale!"

"Actually, it's Budweiser," said Mark, knocking back a gulp.

"I would fain partake of some!" said Loki eagerly.

Mark raised an eyebrow. "Aren't you too young to drink beer?"

"Just let him have some," I said. "It'll be easier for all of us."

Mark shrugged and led us over to the bar, and we each filled a mug with whatever we liked. I took a gulp of the bitter amber fluid and sighed. After all I'd been through today, it tasted like heaven.

Loki took gulp of his beer and scowled. "Verily, this is the weakest ale I have e'er tasted! A hogshead of this stuff would not make a babe walk unsteady! Hath the people of Midgard no stomach for strong drink?"

"Nobody's forcing it on you, Loki," said Julie, downing a gulp of her own beer. She, Dr. Sciuridae, and I found a table and sat down at it. I looked around for Ravenspeaker, but he'd disappeared.

"So, I guess we're done," said Julie.

Dr. Sciuridae shook his head. "It's not over."

Julie looked at him. "Why do you say that?"

He took a gulp of his beer. "Because I'm still here."

"He has a point," I said. "The Elysium Guard sent him here to do a job. If it was over, they'd have returned him to his own dimension."

Sciuridae nodded. "I can't get back on my own, so until my task is completed, I'm stuck here."

"But what else is there to do?" asked Julie.

I shrugged. "I guess we'll see." I glanced over at Loki. He'd apparently challenged a couple of big, beefy Steelheads to an arm-wrestling contest. One stood on either side of him, putting their whole weight into trying to force his arms down. They weren't having any luck.

"Oh my god," said Julie. "We turned a Viking loose in a bar. This can't end well."

"No," I said, sipping my beer, "but it'll be fun to watch."

I awoke lying in bed in the spartan quarters that had been assigned to Julie and me. I realized I was alone. I checked the clock. It was just shy of six in the morning. I got out of bed, pulled on some clothes, and pressed the button by the door. It slid open. Immediately, I heard Julie's voice. She sounded angry. I paused in the doorway, listening.

"Alvin may be blinded by the fact that you look like his brother," she was saying, "but I'm not. I know what you are, Sciuridae."

"Really?" I heard Dr. Sciuridae ask. "What am I, pray tell?"

"A monster," Julie replied. "An evil, murdering psychopath. I trust you about as much as I'd trust a scorpion not to sting me!"

"And you felt the need to tell me this why?" asked Sciuridae, sounding amused.

"I just wanted you to know I'm not fooled by your act," said Julie.

He laughed. "Not that I desire your trust, Nightfox, or feel any need to justify myself to you, but do you know what's been going on in Multifaria since you left?"

"I know you wanted to become their next leader," said Julie.

"Well, that didn't happen," Sciuridae replied. "Apparently, they weren't ready to have a manimal for a leader. But they did make me head of their Ministry of Science."

"Congratulations," Julie sneered.

"Since the fall of Citizen Harmon," he continued, "there's been a lot of fighting between various factions vying for control. I've been using my scientific knowledge to produce food, medicine, and shelter for the people left homeless."

"And of course you've been doing all this out of the goodness of your heart," said Julie.

"What difference does it make why I've been doing it? The point is, it's getting done. I doubt the people who benefit from my work give a damn about my motives. And I daresay I've saved a lot more lives than you and your boyfriend have, running around punching out crooks. Now, was there anything else you wanted to tell me?"

Julie growled, and I heard Sciuridae's door slide shut and her footsteps approaching our room. She stopped and stared at me when she saw me standing in the doorway. "You heard all that?" she asked.

I nodded.

"Well, what do you think? Has he changed?"

I shrugged. "Does it matter? We both knew from the start what kind of person he is, and he's never claimed to be one of the good guys. He even seems proud of that."

She came over and stroked my furry cheek. "I'm just worried about you, is all."

I smiled. "I'm fine. Have you thought about the implications of what he told us?"

"You mean about Lapis Lazuli being pregnant? Yeah, I've thought about it. My heart bleeds for their kid. I wouldn't wish parents like them on anyone."

"It kind of changes things between us, though," I said.

She nodded. "A little. But it doesn't change how I feel about you."

I chrred as she stroked my cheek again. Then I noticed someone coming down the hall toward us. He was a tall man who appeared to be in his fifties, wearing the gleaming chest armor, camouflage pants, black boots, and red beret of a Steelhead soldier. Guns and grenades hung from his belt. His close-cropped hair was gray, as were his neatly trimmed beard and mustache. I recognized him immediately as the Canadian hero Mark Derringer. I also recognized the suitcases he was carrying as belonging to me and Julie.

"Hello, youngsters!" he said, grinning. "I believe these belong to you. I had them brought here from the wreckage of the plane. Good work stopping that storm and apprehending Rakshasa. Feel up to doing some more good?"

"Always glad to work with a living legend, Mr. Derringer!" I said, grinning back at him. I looked up at Julie. "How about you?"

She smiled. "Sure, why not? At least I can do it in costume this time." We took our suitcases from Derringer, went into our room, and began suiting up.

Mark Derringer was indeed a living legend. He'd been fighting crime since the 1930s, when he'd prevented bootleggers from smuggling liquor across the border, since unlike the U.S., Canada hadn't bowed to the will of puritanical zealots who felt it was their sacred duty to safeguard other people's morals. He had no known superpowers, except that despite looking fiftyish and being well over a hundred, he remained as fit and spry as a man in his prime. He had never volunteered any explanation for his longevity, and all attempts to get one out of him had failed. And so he had lived alongside the rest of us mortals for the past century, joining Steelhead Divison when it was created. And why not? After all, there was no law against a man not getting old.

Julie and I emerged from our room and rejoined Derringer in the hall, Julie now wearing her Nightfox costume, a dark gray affair with a hood and cape and a fox-head emblem on the chest, her face covered by a full mask. "So, what's the job?" she asked.

"As you've probably guessed," Derringer replied, "that storm really tore up this region. There've been hundreds of casualities, and we're still in the process of trying to locate and rescue survivors. Thundrax has flown up from Ottawa to help clean up the mess."

I nodded. Craig Carson, a.k.a. Thundrax, was Canada's greatest hero, imbued with the power of something called "the living thunder." I'd met him once when he'd been pursuing a Canadian villain who'd fled to the U.S., and he'd seemed like a hell of a nice guy. Not content with serving his country by just beating up supervillains, he had run for and been elected to Parliament. The thought of the Thunder of the North being involved in debates over tax codes and farm subsidies always made me giggle, but hey, who am I to argue with patriotism? "I can see how someone like Thundrax would be useful for that," I said, "but there's not a lot Nightfox and I can do that ordinary rescue workers couldn't."

"That's not what I need you for," said Derringer. "The Hunter-Patriots are taking advantage of the carnage to increase their power."

"Those nuts?" asked Julie disdainfully. "What, are they trying to blame the storm on the Canadian government?"

"I wouldn't put it past them," Derringer replied, "but it's worse than that. They're collecting the bodies of storm victims and using some kind of magical devices to extract energy from them to bolster their own strength!"

I blinked. "Seriously? I know they've dabbled in mysticism before, but this seems extreme even for them!"

"Well, their plans to bring down the government haven't met with much success," said Derringer, "so perhaps they're getting desperate. Regardless, whatever they're doing has to be stopped, and right now, Steelhead Division's resources are stretched thin just helping the living."

I nodded. "And that's where we come in." I looked up at Julie. "Should we bring Sciuridae and Loki in on this?"

"Do you think they'd care?" she asked.

I shrugged. "Can't hurt to ask." I went to the door of Sciuridae's room and knocked on it. "Hey, Doc, open up!"

The door slid open and there stood Dr. Sciuridae, wearing nothing but a towel around his waist, blinking as his weak eyes strained to focus on me. I had never seen him without his armor before, and while he wasn't as muscled as me, his physique was still impressive, which surprised me, considering how much he relied on technology. Maybe he just wanted to look good for Lapis Lazuli. I tried to imagine how those two had ever gotten together. They weren't exactly a natural pairing—a chipmunk manimal scientist and a punky Latina singer—but then again, neither were Julie and me. I wondered what their child would look like.

"What do you want, Alvin?" he asked, clearly annoyed. "I was just about to take a shower."

"We could use your help with something," I replied.

"Unless it has to do with the Qliphoth, I'm not interested."

"I'm not sure if it does or not," I said, "but it does have a mystical flavor to it." I explained the situation to him.

Sciuridae frowned. "Hmm. There could be a Qliphothic connection . . ."

"We can at least check it out," I said. "Maybe you'll get lucky and it'll fulfill your reason for being here, and you'll pop back to Multifaria and your wife."

"All right, give me a minute to get dressed. I'll meet you in the lounge." His door slid shut.

Mark, Julie and I made our way to the lounge, where we found Loki lying snoring in the middle of a bunch of unconscious Steelheads, the wreckage of several tables and chairs strewn about them. I found a half-full mug of beer and poured it on his head. "Wake up, god-boy."

"What?" Loki demanded, sitting up and sputtering. "Who dares to sully a prince of Asgard?"

"Me, Nightmunk," I replied. "You up for some fighting?"

Loki got to his feet, grinning, beer dripping from his hair. "Does Sleipnir have eight legs?"

"Sleipnir?" I asked. "What's that, a spider?"

"It's Odin's horse," said Julie. She looked at Loki curiously. "Isn't he your kid, too?"

Mark blinked. "He has a son who's an eight-legged horse?"

"Let us to the business at hand," said Loki, quickly. "What varlets are we to fight?" He smacked his fist into his palm and grinned again.

"A group of terrorists called the Hunter-Patriots," I replied. "They want to bring down the Canadian government and sever all ties to the British crown."

"Verily, they sound like a suitably churlish lot!" said Loki. "Let's to battle!"

"And damned be him that first cries 'Hold! Enough!'" I said.

"Oh, that's good!" said Loki, putting an arm around me and smiling. "I like thee, Nightmunk! Thou remindest me of Ratatoskr."

"Do I dare ask?" I asked.

Julie giggled. "Ratatoskr was a squirrel who ran up and down Yggdrasil, the World Tree, carrying messages for the Norse gods."

I frowned. "I'm not sure I appreciate the comparison."

Dr. Sciuridae walked in, wearing his armor and holding his rifle, and looked around. "Well, I see Loki had fun last night. Shall we head out?"

"Verily," I muttered.

Derringer led us all to Force Station Steelhead's garage, and despite being accustomed to strange things, a lot of the Steelheads we passed in the corridors stopped and stared at our bizarre little company—a woman all in dark gray with a hood and cloak, two chipmunk manimals, and a boy dressed like a Viking. We entered a large, circular, domed room smelling of grease, where Steelhead mechanics were working on various vehicles such as snowcats and helicopters. Derringer led us over to three sleek white snowmobiles with maple leaf insignias. "Any of you youngsters ever use one of these things before?" he asked.

I shook my head. "Never. But Nightfox and I ride grav bikes."

"The controls are pretty basic," Derringer said, and gave us a quick rundown in snowmobile driving.

"Won't the Hunter-Patriots hear them coming a mile away, though?" asked Julie.

Derringer grinned, climbed onto one, and fired it up. It made only a soft electric hum. "You were saying?"

Loki folded his arms. "I trust not these mechanical steeds. I shall travel in my own fashion."

"Good," said Dr. Sciuridae. "Then I won't have to share mine with you." He climbed onto one of the snowmobiles and activated it. Derringer took another, and Julie and I took the third, with me sitting behind her and holding her around her waist. The side of the dome ground open, letting in the brilliant sunshine reflecting off the new-fallen snow, and we tore out into the stabbingly cold air, Loki flying along behind.

As we raced along through the silent, frozen forest, we could see abundant evidence of the devastation the storm had wrought all around us. Countless trees had toppled, and loose branches were strewn everywhere, sometimes in mounds so big we had to go around them. My breath misted before me, icicles formed on my cheekfur, and my nose felt sore and raw. I thanked Nighthawk once again for having the foresight to equip my costume with its own internal heating system.

We came to a two-lane highway that was mostly buried under snow, and Derringer led us along it for a few miles until we neared a towering cliff face, whereupon he veered off the highway and behind the cover of an outcropping of rocks. We all stopped there and killed the motors of our snowmobiles.

"Aerial reconaissance shows the HPs have set up a camp near the top of that promotory," said Derringer, pointing. "We estimate there's about a hundred of them. The camp is well fortified, and the perimeter is patrolled by guards with dogs."

"How are they getting the bodies up there?" I asked.

"Helicopters," Derringer replied. "We also suspect that one of their elder members, Paul Johnston, may be up there with them."

"Why don't you just call in an air strike?" asked Sciuridae.

"The Hunter-Patriots may be terrorists and traitors," Derringer replied, "but they're still Canadian citizens. The government is reluctant to use deadly force against its own people unless it's absolutely unavoidable. They'd prefer that Johnston and his lieutenants were taken alive to stand trial for their crimes."

Sciuridae just snorted and shook his head.

"Not everyone's as ruthless as Citizen Harmon, Doctor," Julie reminded him.

Sciuridae turned his goggled face toward her. "Which these Hunter-Patriots are no doubt counting on."

"It's an excellent defensive position," I commented, looking up at it through a pair of mini-binoculars from my utility belt. "Inaccessible, and there's no way to get near it without being seen."

Loki grinned. "These knaves hath reckoned without the matchless guile of a prince of Asgard!" With a wave of his hands, he faded away before our eyes.

"What a relief!" Sciuridae smirked. "I thought he'd never leave!"

"Can you do that for all of us?" I asked the air where Loki had been. In response, I saw Derringer, Julie, and Sciuridae fade out as well. I looked down at myself. There appeared to be nothing there. "Well, then, all that remains is for our two fliers to ferry us up there."

I felt a pair of arms go around my waist, then heard the whine of Sciuridae's jetpack as I left the ground and rose upward toward the edge of the cliff.

Dr. Sciuridae set me down at the edge of the dizzyingly high precipice, and I saw his footprints appear beside mine as his switched off his jetpack and his invisible feet sank into the snow. The prints of Julie's and Derringer's feet appeared, as well. Loki had apparently chosen to remain airborne. I glanced back over my shoulder. From up here there was a breathtaking view—evergreens like pointed green spikes carpeting the rolling hills, great snow-capped mountains rising in the distance beneath an ice-blue sky. There was a stark beauty to this cold and lonely place, something raw and elemental. I turned toward the Hunter-Patriot camp.

It was a ring of white tents around a clearing that served as a landing area for the helicopters, one of which was sitting there now, its rotors gradually slowing. The snow inside the ring had been trodden into ugly, gray-brown slush. All around the camp were men wearing white winter gear and snow goggles and carrying automatic weapons. There were also a number of German shepherd dogs walking around on leashes. Something was being unloaded from the chopper, and I took out my binoculars to get a better look. As I suspected, it was a body. Two Hunter-Patriots carried it into a nearby tent.

"I sense five sources of magical power in yon tents," said Loki. "Their nature is unknown to me, but it stinks of death."

"Those dogs are going to be a problem," said Derringer, sounding concerned. "They'll smell us if we get near. And we'll be leaving tracks in the snow."

"I can help with the latter," said Loki. "Unlike the doctor, I make no noise when I fly."

"Good for you," Dr. Sciuridae sneered.

"He has a point," I said. "I want to see what's inside the tent they just brought that body into. Loki could carry me to it, flying up high above the camp and then coming straight down."

"Sounds like a plan," said Derringer. "Nightfox, Dr. Sciuridae, and I will stay here as backup in case something goes wrong."

I looked where Loki's voice had come from. "Loki, if you would?"

"I shall," said Loki. He put his arms around me, and we rose into the air a hundred feet or so, moved above the camp until the tent was directly beneath us, and then began descending. We landed before the entrance, and I pushed the flap covering it slightly open and peered inside.

The tent contained three Hunter-Patriot soldiers, who were standing before a sleek, shiny, metallic object about the size and shape of a phone booth. It crackled with a sickly purple energy that was all too familiar to me from my brief visit to the Qliphoth. However, that wasn't what bothered me most, as I'd been half-expecting it. It was the other thing.

The other thing was a black, wraithlike creature with glowing red eyes, wearing a ragged, gray, hooded cloak. It was waving its clawed hands over the metal object, and the Qliphothic energy from the object was streaming into the Hunter-Patriots, causing them to glow with it. "Feel the power inside you, mortals," the creature hissed. "Feel it strengthen your bodies. Soon, you will be unstoppable!"

I closed the tent flap and turned to where I thought Loki was. "Any idea what that thing is?" I whispered.

"Dost thou mean the metal object, or the ghost?" asked Loki.

"Either."

"I suspect the object to be a siphon of sorts, drawing off the pain and fear of the death of someone who perished in the storm and using it to strengthen these warriors. As for the ghost, 'tis just a ghost, like any other—an evil, unclean spirit with no proper business among the living."

"What would happen if I stuck my talons in that metal thing?" I asked.

"I know not."

I thought for a moment. I didn't know what I was dealing with here. For all I knew, the siphon might explode and kill me if I tried to destroy it. But destroying the siphons was what we'd come here to do, so we were going to have to find out sooner or later. Oh well, I hadn't come here to tiptoe through the tulips. I pushed aside the tent flap and entered.

The ghost reacted immediately, looking straight at me. "An intruder!" it screeched. "Kill him!" The Hunter-Patriots whirled toward me, machine guns leveled, but they didn't see a target. I took advantage of their confusion to run past them, extend my questionite talons, and take a slash at the siphon. My talons sliced through its side easily, with a sound like tearing paper. It sparked, and the purple glow it was giving off faded. That was it. No kaboom. I breathed a sigh of relief.

That relief was cut short when the ghost screeched again and raised its clawed hands, firing a bolt of blackness at me that hit my left arm. I felt a horrible, numbing cold there that sent a shiver through my whole body. This must be what it felt like to die. I drew a throwing blade with my right hand and hurled it at the ghost. It tore through the body of the thing, which screamed, faded, and was gone.

Unfortunately, whatever magical whammy the ghost had hit me with had destroyed my invisibility. The Hunter-Patriots could see me now, and they immediately opened up on me with their machine guns. I was hit by at least a dozen bullets. My body armor saved me, but I'd be sore for a week, assuming I lived that long. I spun and threw three throwing blades at them. Normally, that would have been enough to drop them, but these guys seemed a lot tougher than normal. I guess that siphon thing really had made them stronger. I turned, sliced an opening in the side of the tent, and jumped through.

Outside, the whole camp was in an uproar, and I found myself in the crosshairs of nearly a hundred angry Canadian terrorists. These were not promising odds. Loki, naturally, was nowhere to be seen. From one of the tents emerged an older man with a leather-tanned face and graying hair. Behind him came a huge gorilla wearing camouflage pants and an army helmet, bandoliers of bullets criss-crossing his bare chest, grenades on his belt, an M-60 machine gun in his huge, hairy hands. I recognized him as Ape-Plus, the result of an experiment by the U.S. Army to create animal supersoldiers, now a soldier of fortune. According to his FBI file, he was strong, fast, tough, smart, and an expert with a variety of weapons. He was also very, very mean.

"Hold your fire!" the older man shouted in a commanding voice, and all the Hunter-Patriots put up their guns. He walked toward me, Ape-Plus lumbering behind. "You're Nightmunk, aren't you? I recognize your costume."

"That's right. And I presume you're Paul Johnston."

He nodded and stopped about ten feet away from me. "So, Steelhead Division is reduced to enlisting foreigners to fight us."

I smirked. "Yeah, they kind of have their hands full right now saving Canadian citizens. I guess they consider that more important than fighting a bunch of so-called patriots. Go figure."

Johnston scowled at me. "We are fighting to save the soul of our beloved land, not its corrupt body!"

I rolled my eyes. "Whatever, Johnston, I couldn't care less about your stupid little war."

"Then why are you here?" he asked suspiciously.

"That thing I just destroyed in the tent. Where did you get it? And where did that ghost come from?"

Johnston grinned. "Steelhead isn't the only one with allies."

"Who?" I asked. "I'm pretty sure it wasn't from King Kong there." I gestured at Ape-Plus.

Ape-Plus leveled his machine gun at me. "Don't call me that!" he snarled in a deep, grating voice. "I hate it when people call me that!"

Johnston pushed the gorilla's gun down. "Not yet, Ape-Plus. He may be of use to us." He turned his attention back to me. "I assume you didn't come alone. Is Derringer with you?"

I shrugged. "Could be."

Johnston smirked. "Well, he's not going to attack while we have you, is he?"

I laughed. "If you think you can use me as a hostage, you're sadly mistaken. It won't deter him."

Ape-Plus's muzzle split in a wide, simian grin. "Then we don't need you, do we, Nightmunk?" He whipped out a combat knife and held it up, the blade gleaming in the cold winter sunlight.

"The gun would be faster," I commented, as the gorilla laid his machine gun down on the snow-covered ground beside him.

Ape-Plus nodded, still grinning. "But not as much fun. Besides, I know your costume's bulletproof." He began advancing toward me.

"Okay, then," I said, grinning back at him and raising my claws. "Let's party."

Ape-Plus approached warily, his knife describing a figure eight in the air before him as he looked for an opening. He may have been an intelligent six-hundred-pound gorilla trained as a commando, but he knew my reputation. He wasn't taking any chances. That was fine with me. The longer this lasted, the better. I noted that a crowd of Hunter-Patriots had gathered around us to watch the fight.

As Ape-Plus and I circled each other, two people emerged from a nearby tent. One was a man dressed like a typical ninja—black tunic, trousers, soft boots, hood, and mask. The other was a woman who appeared to be part cat. Her entire body was covered in orange fur with black stripes, turning white on her chest and belly, and she had feline ears, eyes, whiskers, and a tail, the ears poking out through a bushy mane of orange hair. She wore nothing save a black bikini bottom, leaving her furry breasts exposed, though they were partly covered by her cascading hair. "Like, what's going on?" the tiger-girl asked, looking confused. Great. Another Californian.

"What does it look like, you bubble-headed fool?" the ninja snapped, speaking with a Japanese accent. "We have an intruder!"

She stuck her tongue out at him. "There's no need to be rude, Black Mist." Then her eyes focused on me. "Oh my god, he's so cute!" She looked at Ape-Plus. "You're not gonna kill him, are you?"

"That's the idea, Lynx," the gorilla grunted, keeping his eyes on me as we continued circling.

Lynx pouted. "You're always killing people. Do you have to be so violent?"

"It's what they pay me for," Ape-Plus replied.

I grinned at him. "You could always get a job in a circus."

Ape-Plus snarled and lunged, stabbing with his knife. I parried with my talons and spun inside his reach, slashing at his massive chest. He was faster than his bulk would suggest, though, and jumped back, evading my cut and recovering, his knife held up defensively. The Army had trained him well.

I noticed that Black Mist had vanished, which was troubling. I didn't have time to think about it, though, since Ape-Plus had decided on a change of tactics. He slipped off one of his bandoliers and swung it above his head in a circle, intending to use it to entangle me, making the most of his great reach and strength. Fortunately, I'd encountered this stunt before. As he swept it at me, I put out my arm, letting the bandolier wrap around it. Then, before he could pull it taut, I sliced through it with my questionite talons. Ape-Plus looked surprised. "Clever little cuss, ain't you?" he growled.

I grinned back at him. "You think you're the first talking gorilla I've fought? I'm from Monster Island, you dope! I was trained by a gorilla. This is a trip down memory lane for me!"

Lynx giggled. "He sure is making you look silly, Ape-Plus. I guess size isn't everything. Then again, you'd know all about that, wouldn't you?" She giggled again.

"Shut up, Lynx!" Ape-Plus roared, and charged at me, his knife raised to strike. I silently thanked her for making him mad enough to do something stupid. I dove as his knife sliced through the air inches above my head, sliding through the snow on my belly between his trunk-like legs. As I passed beneath him, I swept my arms back, and my talons cut through the back of each of his legs, hamstringing him. Ape-Plus howled in pain and fell face down in the snow, blood pouring from his calves.

"No!" Lynx cried. Then she snarled and leaped at me, claws bared. I barely had time to get to my feet before she was slashing at me savagely, her claws raking across my armor. I slashed back, but she was amazingly fast and agile, and easily evaded my cut. She crouched, glaring at me with her golden cat eyes, lips drawn back to expose her fangs, her tail lashing angrily. "You shouldn't have done that! He's not bad, just misunderstood! Like me!"

"Which explains why you're both working for a gang of murderers," I said, crouching low with my arms spread wide.

She shrugged her furry shoulders. "Genetic modifications aren't cheap."

I stared at her. "You mean you wanted to be this way?"

She nodded, grinning and licking her fuzzy lips. "Now I have the world's most awesome fursuit!"

I shook my head. "Black Mist was right. You are a bubble-head!"

"Oh, him!" she said scornfully. "He's no fun at all!"

"Ninja aren't exactly known for being fun."

Our conversation was abruptly terminated when a nearby tent ripped open and two figures tumbled out: Nightfox and Black Mist, the former with her fighting staff, the latter wielding a wakazashi, or Japanese short sword. "Everyone get down!" Nightfox yelled. Paul Johnston and most of the Hunter-Patriots immediately hit the dirt, and I did the same. A second later, four tents exploded in enormous fireballs, sending shrapnel whizzing through the air above me. Lynx, who hadn't ducked, caught a piece and cried out, dropping to one knee and clutching her bleeding side.

I got to my feet and looked around. The camp looked as if it had just been hit with that air strike Dr. Sciuridae had suggested. Speaking of whom, I saw his small blue-and-black armored figure coming around the side of one of the destroyed tents, his rifle ready. Around another one came Mark Derringer, and around a third came Loki, grinning with delight, his yellow cape blowing in the breeze. Meanwhile, Nightfox and Black Mist had gotten up and resumed their fight, steel clanging on steel.

Paul Johnston rose to his feet and fixed his eyes on Derringer, fairly frothing at the mouth. "You! You traitor!"

Derringer smirked. "I was fighting for Canada before you were born, Johnston."

Johnston shrieked incoherently, drew his pistol, and fired at Derringer, who dove aside as bullets hit the ground and sent up puffs of snow. Sciuridae tossed an object at Johnston, and it burst on impact, encasing him in a web of sticky threads that he uselessly struggled against.

"Your leader is bested!" Loki shouted. "Your cause is lost! Surrender peacefully, and mayhap we shall show ye mercy! Resist, and ye will receive none! So sayeth the son of Odin!" The Hunter-Patriots looked around, murmuring among themselves uncertainly.

All at once, there came a deep, low groaning sound that seemed to flow across the landscape like a lengthening shadow, reverberating through the earth and sending a chill up all our spines. Nightfox and Black Mist halted their battle, listening, as a feeling of dread twisted my guts.

"What the hell was that?" asked Dr. Sciuridae.

Johnston chuckled. "Our ally."

"Look!" said Nightfox, pointing to the north. I spun and looked. High in the sky was something that looked like a scarlet rag being blown by the wind—but it was coming from the opposite direction. I heard Sciuridae gasp as he looked at it, and, remembering his telescopic goggles, I whipped out my own pair of mini-binoculars and trained them on it. Then I gasped, too.

It was a humanoid figure, its skin the putrid green-gray color of a corpse that's been dead for days. It was dressed in a tattered red cloak and hood and ragged brown trousers, its chest, arms, and feet bare. Around its waist it wore a belt made of small skulls, the skulls of children. Its upper torso was connected to its pelvis by a thin stalk that was apparently all that remained of its abdomen. The eyes in its skull-like head glowed pale yellow, and its fingers and toes bore long, clawlike nails. I lowered my binoculars and stared at Paul Johnston. "I keep thinking you guys can't get any dumber, and you keep surprising me. Why in God's name would you ally yourselves with something like that?"

"Necrull promised to destroy our enemies," Johnston replied.

"I'm sure he will," I said. "And I'm equally sure he won't stop with them!"

Necrull flew down and floated in the air above the Hunter-Patriot camp. "Who destroyed my necrotic siphons?" he asked, in a hoarse, raspy voice that sounded like someone drawing their final breath. His eyes fixed on me, eyes that held nothing but contempt for all that lived. I shivered beneath them.

"The same ones who'll destroy you!" shouted Dr. Sciuridae, firing a volley of plasma bolts at the emaciated specter. Necrull raised a clawed hand, and a glowing shield appeared before him, absorbing the bolts harmlessly.

Necrull laughed, a sound like someone gargling with sand. "Necrull is immortal, you fool! You cannot destroy me! You can only hasten your inevitable defeat!" He raised his arms, his withered body arching backward, and suddenly all the Hunter-Patriots, including Paul Johnston, groaned and writhed in agony. "You sought my aid and allowed yourselves to be infused with necrullitic energy! Now, kill!"

I looked around the camp wildly. Every Hunter-Patriot had the same glowing yellow eyes and sickly green-gray skin as Necrull, their lips pulled back in rictus grins. Zombies with machine guns. Not a happy thought. I noticed Loki looking up at Necrull, and for the first time since I'd met him, his youthful face displayed fear.

And then, the shooting began.

The zombie Hunter-Patriots started spraying bullets in all directions. I dove to the ground and rolled to avoid the fusillade. Even though my costume was armored, with so much lead flying around there was always the chance I might catch one in my handsome furry face. Derringer had the same idea and was running for cover as he fired back. He hit several of them, but they simply jerked and kept shooting. Black Mist hurled a smoke bomb to the ground, and the smoke enveloped both him and Nightfox in an obscuring cloud. The problem with that plan was that the zombies didn't have to be accurate. They could just fill the air with bullets, since they didn't care if they hit each other. Sciuridae fired a grenade into a cluster of the ones shooting at the smoke, sending zombies and parts of zombies flying everywhere. That bought Nightfox and Black Mist some breathing room, but it was only a temporary reprieve.

I noticed Lynx kneeling nearby, blood running down her leg from the wound in her side, frozen in fear. As skimpily attired as she was, she had no protection at all from bullets. I got up and ran to her, pushed her down into the snow, and tore off my hood and cape, laying them over her. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing. Unfortunately, now my whole head was exposed. I looked up, saw several zombies approaching us with their machine guns leveled, and took a particle bomb from my belt, congratulating myself on having the foresight to save one.

All at once, the zombies around us went into slow motion, as did the bullets they were firing. Several of the slugs hit me and Lynx, but they might as well have been styrofoam peanuts for all the effect they were having. I glanced over at Loki. He was running toward us, having just summoned his sigils of ebon weakness. I wondered if he could teach me that spell.

"We have to get out of here!" I shouted.

Loki nodded. "Though my Asgardian heart doth rebel against it, I fear thou art right, Nightmunk. I like not these odds."

I indicated Ape-Plus, who was lying bleeding on the ground nearby, his legs useless thanks to what I'd done to his Achilles tendons. "Can you carry him to the helicopter?"

Loki looked surprised. "Thou wishest to save yon beast?"

"Yes, I wishest!"

He shrugged. "So be it. His bulk shall no obstacle pose for a son of Odin."

"Good! Get him!" I helped Lynx to her feet and we headed for the chopper, the cat-woman limping along beside me.

We arrived at the chopper and climbed in through the side door. I didn't know how to fly a helicopter, and I was reasonably certain Lynx didn't either, but there was someone here who might. The zombies were shooting at it, but Loki's sigils were preventing them from doing any damage, at least for the moment. I knew from past experience they wouldn't last long, though.

Loki came lumbering up to us, bearing a six-hundred-pound gorilla on his back as though he weighed nothing, and dumped him on the floor of the helicopter. "Can you fly this thing?" I asked Ape-Plus.

"Not without legs," he growled, glaring hatefully at me.

I glanced at Loki. "Apple dust." He opened his belt pouch, reached in, and sprinkled some of his golden apple dust on Ape-Plus's legs. Immediately, they were healed. Ape-Plus looked down at his feet, flexing his toes in wonder. "Now get us out of here!" I shouted.

Ape-Plus nodded and climbed into the pilot's seat, flipped some switches above his head, and the engine whined as the rotor began to move. I ran to the door and shouted out to the others, "Marines, we are leaving!"

Derringer, who had been hunkered down behind some crates and chucking grenades, heard me and made a break for the chopper, shooting right and left as he did. The zombies shot back, but his body armor protected him. Unfortunately, there were a mob of them between him and the chopper. I tossed my last particle bomb into the midst of them, with predictable results. Derringer sprinted through the space I'd cleared for him and jumped aboard. Nightfox and Black Mist ran through the opening too, but the latter took a bullet in the leg, which made him stumble. Nightfox caught him and helped him to the helicopter, whose rotor was picking up speed even as the zombies did likewise as Loki's sigils faded.

I looked around for Dr. Sciuridae. He'd been blasting away like crazy, mowing down zombies by the dozen and firing off grenade after grenade, but his rifle was now empty. He triggered his jetpack and flew upward away from them, bullets bouncing off his body armor. I breathed a sigh of relief as he and the chopper rose up into the air and safety.

Then Necrull, who had been floating above the camp doing nothing this whole time, raised a claw-fingered hand, and a black tendril snaked out, wrapping around Sciuridae's neck. Sciuridae struggled, his hands pulling uselessly at the choking tendril. Necrull flew off to the north at terrific speed, dragging the chipmunk manimal along with him as my screams were drowned out by the noise from the helicopter.

I ran to the helicopter's cockpit and yelled at Ape-Plus, "Follow them!"

"What's the point?" the gorilla asked. "There's no way this old crate can catch them."

I popped the questionite claws of my right gauntlet and held them inches from his wrinkled simian face. "Just do it!"

He shrugged and pushed the control stick forward, and the chopper tilted and headed in the direction Necrull and Dr. Sciuridae had gone. I went back to the passenger compartment to rejoin the others. "Loki," I said, "heal Lynx and Black Mist."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" asked Nightfox.

"We may need them," I replied.

"For what?"

"To rescue Dr. Sciuridae."

"You really think they're going to help us do that?"

I looked at the two villains. "That depends on how they feel about the prospect of spending the rest of their lives in prison."

Lynx gritted her teeth as she clutched her blood-soaked side. "That would really suck!"

"Then help us and maybe we can get you reduced sentences," I said.

"What if we become zombies?" cried Lynx. "That would suck even worse!"

"If Necrull could turn us into zombies, he would have done it already," I said. "He was only able to do it to the Hunter-Patriots because they let themselves be infused with the energies from his necrotic siphons."

Black Mist spoke up. "You saved my life. Honor demands I repay the debt. I will help."

I nodded to Loki, and he reached into his belt pouch and sprinkled some of his golden apple dust on the bullet wound in the ninja's leg. Instantly, it was healed. I looked at Lynx. "How about you?"

Lynx's feline eyes were wide with fear and her jaw clenched in pain. I had gotten the impression that she wasn't really a bad person, just a not-very-bright one who had fallen in with the wrong crowd and was now in way over her head. She certainly couldn't be as bad as Sciuridae. I found myself feeling guilty about being willing to put her in further danger to rescue him.

"O-okay," she said, finally. "I'm in." Loki sprinkled his dust on the wound in her side, and she groaned with relief as it healed up. She looked at me with grateful eyes, smiling. "Thank you, Nightmunk."

"Don't thank me yet," I said, as I went back to the cockpit. I plopped down in the copilot's seat and donned the headset there. "Black Mist and Lynx have agreed to help us rescue Dr. Sciuridae," I said to Ape-Plus, not looking at him.

The gorilla nodded. "And?"

"You interested?"

"Why would I be?"

"You might get out of jail sooner."

He threw back his head and laughed. "You have any idea how many people I've killed?"

"You're an army experiment who went rogue because you were fed up with being treated like a slave. That should get you a certain amount of public sympathy."

"Yeah, I can just imagine all the people who'll be outside protesting while I'm strapped down and a needle's being stuck in my arm."

"That might not happen if someone with influence speaks up for you," I said.

He glanced at me. "You?"

"I'm friends with the Champions."

"And why should I trust you?"

"I already saved your life once."

His lips drew back in a sneer. "Only because you needed someone who could fly a chopper."

I shook my head. "Wrong. Derringer could have done that."

"He's right," came Mark Derringer's voice over our headsets. "I learned to fly choppers in Korea."

I looked up at Ape-Plus. He was gazing straight ahead. "Maybe we could arrange for you to be sent to Monster Island," I said. "There are other talking gorillas there. You wouldn't be alone anymore. You might even find a mate and raise a family." Ape-Plus turned his head and stared at me. I shrugged. "Stranger things have happened. Anyway, what have you got to lose?"

Ape-Plus seemed to think about it for a minute, then he sighed and shrugged his massive shoulders. "Fine, I'll do it."

A piercing squeal of delight rang in our ears, making us both wince. "Can I go to Monster Island, too?" Lynx begged. "There are cat people there, right? I'll fit right in!"

"Yes, there are cat people there," I said. "But remember, I can't make any promises. It's not my decision. I'm just saying it's possible."

Loki and Derringer stuck their heads into the cockpit, and Derringer pointed at a large, flat-topped, snow-covered hill ahead of us. "That's Burial Butte. According to Ravenspeaker, it was blessed by the northern gods, and various members of the First Nations came there from near and far to bury their dead for centuries."

"Sounds like the perfect place for someone like Necrull to call home," I commented.

Loki nodded. "It doth reek of the same foul magic as his siphons. He is there, or I am no son of Odin!"
Ape-Plus aimed the chopper toward Burial Butte, and as we drew closer I could see that the top was dotted with hundreds of cairns, along with black, leafless trees that looked twisted and deformed. A pall of gloom and dread hung over the place, and it seemed noticeably darker than the land around it. I felt a shiver run through me, and glanced at Ape-Plus, Derringer, and Loki. They all appeared uneasy, as well.

"Trolls!" Loki exclaimed, stabbing a finger at the base of the butte.

I took out my mini-binoculars and looked where he was pointing. "Not trolls," I corrected him. "Bigfoots."

Ape-Plus stared at me. "Bigfoots? But those are just a myth!"

The irony of a talking gorilla saying bigfoots weren't real wasn't lost on me. "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Ape-Plus," I said, grinning at him.

"They look like they belong to the Tsiataka tribe," Derringer commented, peering through his own pair of binoculars. "This could be a problem."

"You know about them?" I asked, surprised.

"Steelhead Division has known about them for decades," he replied. "The Canadian government has an agreement with them, negotiated by Ravenspeaker. We leave them alone and downplay any reports of them, and they refrain from killing humans who trespass on their tribal land, which is marked with signs and on maps as a restricted area."

"Well, they're not abiding by the agreement anymore," I said. "They beheaded some of the passengers from Flight 408."

Derringer nodded. "They're also 'off the reservation,' so to speak. Burial Butte isn't on their tribal land. Neither is the crash area of Flight 408."

"No doubt that fiend Necrull is responsible!" Loki declared.

"That sounds like a safe bet," I replied. "But how do we find him?"

"Ravenspeaker told me Burial Butte is honeycombed with tunnels and caves," Derringer replied. "Necrull must be inside, somewhere."

"Do you know where the entrance is?" I asked.

He shook his head. "I've never been inside. The whole place is sacred ground."

"No longer," said Loki, grimly. "It hath been defiled and corrupted by Necrull's evil influence!"

I sighed. "Well, I guess we're just gonna have to search for it, then," I said, biting my lip and trying not to think about what Necrull might be doing to Dr. Sciuridae.

"Maybe not," said Derringer, pointing at something. I peered in the direction he was indicating. A small black shape was fluttering in the air just ahead of us.

"What's that?" asked Ape-Plus, looking perplexed.

I grinned. "A raven."

Once it had our attention, the raven wheeled and flew down toward the butte. I pointed at it. "Follow that bird!" Ape-Plus nodded and pushed the helicopter's control stick forward, and we headed off after it.

The raven led us down to a spot at the base of the southwest side of Burial Butte, and Ape-Plus guided the chopper toward an open area about a hundred feet from the sheer rock. "We got company," the gorilla said, ominiously.

I nodded. There were bigfoots closing in around us in a semicircle. "We can't leave the chopper on the ground. They'll tear it apart." I turned to Derringer. "Dust off once we're out. I'll radio for evac on the emergency band."

"Roger," Derringer replied.
"I guess you don't trust me not to fly away and never come back," muttered Ape-Plus.

I glanced at him. "Actually, I was thinking I'd rather have a six-hundred-pound gorilla trained as a commando in there with us than a normal human. No offense, Mark."

"None taken," said Derringer.

"Also," I added, "I apologize if I've been exceeding my authority. I know I've kind of been taking charge, even though I'm only a civilian."

"And you've been doing a fine job, Nightmunk," Derringer said, smiling.

Being praised by a living legend made me feel good. I smiled back at him. "Thanks, Mark." The chopper touched down in the clearing, and I turned and called back into the passenger compartment, "Okay, troops, let's move out!"

I opened the door on my side, hopped out into the snow, and closed the door as the wash from the rotor whipped my cape around. Ape-Plus got out on the other side, and Nightfox, Loki, Black Mist, and Lynx jumped down from the passenger compartment. I looked around. The Tsiataka were coming fast, and there were a lot of them. Derringer gunned the engine and the chopper rose into the air, leaving us to fend for ourselves against a score of head-hunting bigfoots.

"Head for the butte!" I yelled, and began running as fast as my short legs would carry me toward the towering cliff face. The others did likewise as Tsiataka spears began raining down around us. The spears were about ten feet long and as thick as beer cans, and each one probably weighed about forty or fifty pounds. The closest Tsiataka were still about a hundred feet away. I reflected that if bigfoots participated in the Olympics, Canada would take home every medal in the track and field events. I giggled hysterically at the thought of a grinning bigfoot on a cereal box, making Lynx and Black Mist look at me oddly.

Waiting for us, perched on a rock beside an opening in the side of the butte that was roughly circular and about six feet in diameter, was the raven. It tilted its head as we ran past it, regarding us with its beady black eyes. I didn't know if it was Ravenspeaker or one of his servants, and I didn't have time to ask as I plunged into the opening, Tsiataka spears striking the rock wall around me. Once we were all inside, Loki turned and waved his hands, and a wall of floating arcane symbols appeared over the opening. A couple of Tsiataka came up to it and whacked at it with their gigantic stone axes, to no effect.

"You sure that will hold them?" I asked, panting.

He shrugged. "'Tis not so strong as dwarf-forged steel, nor so impassable as the flames of Muspelheim, but 'tis enough, 'twill do."

"Who is this kid," asked Ape-Plus, sounding annoyed, "and why does he talk so funny?"

I chuckled. "Ape-Plus, meet Loki Odinson, prince of Asgard."

The gorilla stared at me. "Seriously?"

I shrugged. "So he says."

"Verily, beast," said Loki, regarding Ape-Plus superciliously, "and thou shalt accord me all the deference my rank is due or face my divine wrath!"

Ape-Plus growled and took a menacing step toward him. "Listen, you little squirt . . ."

"Might I remind you," I interrupted, "that he carried you to the helicopter and healed your legs?"

The gorilla glared at the godling, who stood with his arms folded smugly, and said nothing further.

Meanwhile, Nightfox and Black Mist had moved a short distance down the tunnel we were in. "Alvin," called Nightfox, "come have a look at this." I walked down the tunnel toward her, with Loki, Ape-Plus, and Lynx following.

"Are you really a prince?" Lynx asked Loki, sounding awed.

"My father is Odin, king of Asgard," Loki replied, grinning.

"Wow!" Lynx exclaimed. "I'm Lynx. Nice to meet you, Loki. You know, you're kind of cute! And I love the way you talk!"

Loki gazed up at her. "Thou art not uncomely thyself, in an animal way."

"Maybe when all this is over we could get together?" Lynx asked hopefully.

"'Tis a thought," Loki said, "provided we survive the battle to come."

Ape-Plus growled again, and Lynx smirked at him. "Don't be like that, Apey. We had some fun, but a girl has to think of her future."

I sighed and did my best to ignore the nonsense transpiring behind me. Granted, Loki wasn't a normal kid—in fact, I still wasn't sure exactly what he was—but given how young he looked, Lynx flirting so shamelessly with him made me uncomfortable. Plus she certainly wasn't doing anything to dispel the catgirl stereotype. I was relieved when we reached a small rocky chamber where Nightfox and Black Mist were waiting for us, the former illuminating the chamber with a glowstick held in her gloved hand.

In the center of the chamber stood a black stone obelisk about ten feet tall, shaped like the Washington Monument, its sides covered with glowing runes. To either side of the obelisk stood a wooden totem pole with a breathtakingly ugly face carved on it. On the opposite side of the chamber was the opening to another tunnel, covered with a wall of oily black threads.

"Those threads look like they're moving," Nightfox commented.

I turned to Loki. "What do you make of it?"

"'Tis Necrull's work," Loki replied. "It hath his stink about it."

"I could have guessed that," I said. "The question is, how do we deal with it?"

Loki gestured at the obelisk. "Yon black stone is part of the original design, a ward created to protect the honored dead interred here. The wooden totems have been erected by Necrull, to twist its power to his own dark ends."

I nodded. "So the totems have to go." I popped my claws and took a step forward.

"Wait!" cried Nightfox and Black Mist.

Too late. Around the base of each totem pole, a dozen skeletal corpses burst out of the ground and came sailing through the air toward us. I slashed at one with my claws, slicing it in half, but several more landed on me and knocked me on my back. Nightfox and Black Mist tore into the undead horde, Nightfox smashing with her staff while Black Mist slashed with his sword. Lynx snarled and leaped into the fray, tearing into dessicated zombie torsos with her claws, while Ape-Plus pounded on them with his massive fists and Loki blasted them with mystic bolts. Within a minute, the floor of the chamber was strewn with twitching, wriggling zombie parts.

"Yuck!" Lynx complained, shaking her hands in an effort to remove the dried, dead flesh beneath her claws. "Fighting zombies is gross!"

"Tell me about it," muttered Ape-Plus, whose fur was matted with zombie dust. He wrapped his long arms around one of the totem poles and, with a mighty roar, uprooted it and held it above his head, looking an awful lot like King Kong, much as he would have hated to hear that. He hurled the totem pole against the wall of the chamber, where it broke in half. I went over to the other one and hacked at it with my claws. The wood splintered easily beneath my questionite talons, and it toppled over.

"Now what?" I asked, turning to Loki.

In response, Loki walked up to the black stone obelisk, studied the glowing runes on its sides for a moment, then moved his fingers across its surface, altering them. Immediately, a blinding bolt of light shot from the top of the obelisk, striking the wall of oily black threads, which dissolved into smoke, revealing a tunnel that led deeper into the butte. He turned to me and grinned. "A trifle." Then he blinked as Lynx wrapped her furry arms around him and licked his cheek, while Ape-Plus glared and growled.

We made our way down the dank, rough-hewn tunnel, Nightfox and me lighting the way with glowsticks as we entered a Stygian world. In this case, the metaphor was especially apt, for this was a place of the dead, where no living soul had trod for centuries. Water dripped slowly from the ceiling, ticking off the endless years, and the air was stale and tinged with the fetid odor of decay. A feeling of oppressive gloom and hopelessness began growing inside me, mocking the notion that anything I did had a point or anything I believed actually mattered, taunting me with promises of the peace and silence of the grave.

"Wow, what a creepy place!" Lynx remarked, her banal comment breaking me out of my morbid reverie, and in that moment, I loved her. As dumb and silly as she was, she was a beacon of life and light and joy in that dark, depressing world.

Loki nodded. "My daughter Hel would feel much at home here."

Ape-Plus stared at him. "You have a daughter? You don't even look old enough to have had a first date!"

"With Loki, things are rarely what they seem," said Nightfox.

I noticed something white lying in a puddle in front of me and bent down to pick it up. It was a piece of paper. It had blue lines on it, and one edge was torn, suggesting that it had been ripped out of a notebook. There was also writing on it, some of which was still legible. I read what I could out loud. "Most peculiar. My powers are growing. My Necullitic formula has not changed, but its effects are increased. My reach is longer. My control is more precise, and my Necrullitic Regeneration faster and more efficient. Explanation? I have none. Should I be worried? Must investigate."

"Necrull must have been some kind of scientist or wizard experimenting with reanimation," said Nightfox.

I nodded. "Because that always ends well."

"Verily," said Loki, "one would think you mortals would learn the folly of prying into secrets reserved for the gods."

I glanced back at him. "Easy for you to say. You're immortal."

Loki grinned. "Thou presumest knowledge which thou hast not, Nightmunk."

"You mean you're not immortal?" asked Nightfox.

His grin faded. "Even for a god, there is a point of no return."

"Which raises a question that's been bugging me ever since I first met you," said Nightfox. "Did Ragnarok ever happen? Because if it did, you should be dead."

Loki was silent for a moment. When he finally spoke, there was a weight of sadness in his youthful voice. "There is what is foretold, and there is what is. I shall say no more." Then he held up his hand, which burst into flame, and proceeded down the tunnel, his hand lighting the way like a torch. Nightfox and I looked at each other and then went after him, with Lynx, Black Mist, and Ape-Plus following behind.

We came upon another chamber, much larger than the first, containing another black stone obelisk with glowing runes on its sides. There were three of those ugly totem poles, and an opening in one wall that was covered with sticky black threads. It was also teeming with undead creatures of various types. Some were fat, slobbering things, others were emaciated and gangly, and some were ghosts similar to the one I'd seen operating the necrotic siphon back in the Hunter-Patriot camp. There were even some bigfoot zombies. Apparently, they'd buried their honored dead here, too. I wondered how much interaction they'd had with the Native Americans, how much their cultures had rubbed off on each other. The totem poles in the Chiyetah village wouldn't have looked out of place in the Pacific Northwest.

I put those musings aside as the undead throng charged at us. Loki lay down his Sigils of Ebon Weakness, and the rest of us tore into the slow-moving zombies, using whatever weapons we favored. I slashed with my claws, sending heads and limbs flying. A bigfoot spear that should have gone right through me struck my chest, but thanks to Loki's sigils, it just thudded off my armored costume, and I hacked through the bigfoot zombie's legs and sent him tumbling to the ground. Ape-Plus leaped to the ceiling, which was dripping with stalactites, and bounded from one to another above the horde of zombies. Reaching one of the totem poles, he ripped it out of the ground and hurled it at them, crushing a dozen or more beneath its weight as he pounded his hairy chest and roared in triumph.

Eventually, the chamber was cleared. We destroyed the other two totem poles while Loki altered the runes on the obelisk, causing another bolt of light to dispel the writhing curtain of black threads covering the opening to the next tunnel. I noticed another scrap from Necrull's notebook lying on the floor, and picked it up and read it aloud. "Strange. My experiments are more successful than I ever imagined, or can rationally explain. With each reanimation I undertake, my power grows. The effect is intoxicating . . . addicting. I cannot stop. My body courses with Necrullitic Energy, the power of death over life. I must continue my work. Immortality is inevitable."

"Sounds like he was getting more than he bargained for," Nightfox commented.

"Sounds like he was becoming a death junkie," I said, crushing the paper in my hand.

"You think your friend is still alive?" asked Lynx anxiously.

"I wouldn't bet on it," said Ape-Plus. "Necrull sounds like a class A loon."

"He is clearly obsessed," said Black Mist. "His dream of immortality is all that matters to him."

Lynx made a "bleah" face. "Who wants to live forever looking like that?"

"I don't know about you," said Ape-Plus, "but I don't wanna end up like the Hunter-Patriots. I'm for getting out of here right now!"

"And go where?" asked Nightfox. "Have you forgotten this place is surrounded by bigfoot headhunters?"
"I'd rather take my chances with them than with someone like Necrull!" the gorilla shot back.

I looked from him, to Lynx, to Black Mist. "Whether or not Dr. Sciuridae is still alive is irrelevant," I said. "You heard what Necrull wrote in his journal. The more he uses his powers, the stronger he gets. He's a threat to every living thing on this planet. He has to be stopped . . . now."

"There's a ton of heroes out there!" snarled Ape-Plus, gesturing at the wall of the chamber. "Let them do it! That's what they're for!"

I glared up at the huge gorilla. "Coward."

His eyes widened. "You little shit! Nobody calls me that!" He took step toward me, flexing his huge hands.

I grinned at him smugly. "Go ahead, monkey-boy. I already kicked your ass once today."

Ape-Plus raised his fists to strike as I popped my claws. Then a magic bolt struck the gorilla in the chest, knocking him off his feet. As he sat up, dazed, Loki strode over to him, fists clenched, his youthful face twisted with fury. "Stupid beast! Art thou truly so witless as to be blind to the peril that lies before thee? Necrull is the enemy of all who live! If thou wouldst go, then go, and waste not our time with thy childish tantrums! Loki would welcome thine absence!"

Ape-Plus stared at the boy blankly. Then Lynx came over and knelt beside the gorilla, putting her arms around his barrel chest. "We have to help them, Apey," she said quietly.

He looked at her in surprise. "You really want to do this?"

Lynx shook her head. "No, I'm scared to death. I never wanted any of this. But we're here, so it's up to us." She kissed his cheek.

Ape-Plus sighed. "Fine." He got to his feet.

I turned to Black Mist. "What about you?"

"A ninja is always ready to die," he replied stoically.

"All right, then," I said. "Let's nail the bastard."

We headed toward the entrance to the next tunnel.

The tunnel wound deeper and deeper into Burial Butte. I wondered how deep these catacombs went and how old they were. If memory served, the mountains in this part of Canada had once been higher than the Himalayas but had been worn down to their present size by millions of years of erosion. This tunnel didn't look smooth enough to have been formed by water, though. Someone had dug it. But who, and how long ago? Perhaps Ravenspeaker would know. I'd have to ask him if I ever saw him again.

We came to another cavern full of undead things, and proceeded to dispatch them just as we had the last two. There was another curtain of writhing black threads and another obelisk surrounded by ugly totem poles. We destroyed the totems, Loki did his thing to the obelisk and dispelled the curtain, and I found yet another torn page from Necrull's journal, which I read aloud: "I remain at a loss to explain why my experiments have been more successful than they have any right to be. Could some unknown external force be amplifying the effects of my Necrullitic transformations? I no longer care about an explanation. I only crave the power each transmutation brings. I hunger for it. And as my power grows, so too does my appetite . . ."

Lynx shivered, hugging herself. "He sounds like a vampire!"

"Let's hope he's only that bad," I said. "I've defeated vampires before."

Ape-Plus looked at me skeptically. "You have?"

I nodded. "In Vibora Bay. There's a gang of them down there, the New Shadows."

"You think that external force he mentioned could be the Qliphoth?" asked Nightfox.

"I'm certain of it," I replied. "His necrotic siphons were giving off Qliphothic energy. Either he's accidentally found a way of tapping into it, or someone there is supplying it to him."

"Someone like Shadow Destroyer," said Nightfox darkly.

"What the hell are you two talking about?" asked Ape-Plus, baffled. "What's the Qliphoth? Who's Shadow Destroyer?"

"I'll explain later," I said. "Right now we have to focus on stopping Necrull before he gets any more powerful." With that, I headed off down the next tunnel, and the others followed.

Down, down, down. "'I must be getting somewhere near the center of the Earth,' said Alice," I remarked as we made our way down the tunnel.

"Alice who?" asked Lynx, looking confused.

I grinned back at her. "Just misquoting Lewis Carroll."

"You're such a bimbo," said Ape-Plus, sneering at Lynx. "Even I knew that."

She stuck her tongue out at him in response.

"If we encounter a white rabbit," said Black Mist, "I am leaving."

I stared at him. "That sounded dangerously close to being a joke!"

"We ninja are not completely humorless," he replied. "After all, I chose to work for those Hunter-Patriot buffoons. And with these two escapees from a zoo." He gestured at Lynx and Ape-Plus.

I nodded. "That'll teach you to pick your employers more carefully."

"Hey, you ain't been no picnic to work with either, Mist," snarled Ape-Plus. "All you ever do is bitch!"

"I do my job," Black Mist said. "I do not have to be happy about it, nor with the company I am forced to keep."

"Stuck up nip," Ape-Plus growled.

"Smelly, hairy beast," Black Mist retorted.

"Good god!" cried Nightfox. "Are you both ten years old? Shut up!"

Loki giggled, clearly enjoying the show, and I was about to compliment Nightfox on being the most mature member of our little company, when a sudden shrill scream echoed down the tunnel. There was no mistaking that it had issued from the mouth of a chipmunk. I bolted down the tunnel toward it.

The tunnel opened into another large cavern, this one containing only two occupants. Necrull was floating about a foot above the stone floor, one claw-like hand stretched out toward Dr. Sciuridae, who was secured to the wall by those oily black threads. The chipmunk looked gaunt and haggard, his eyes and cheeks sunken, but he was glaring at Necrull with blazing hatred. Past them, I could see an opening in the far wall of the cavern that glowed with a sickly purple energy I knew all too well.

"Your spirit is sweet, little manimal," said Necrull, in that hoarse, grating voice of his. "So much stronger than the others I've devoured. I could nibble on it for days."

"S-screw you, Necrull," Sciuridae hissed through clenched teeth. Black tendrils snaked from Necrull's bony fingers to touch him, and the chipmunk screamed again, writhing in his bonds.

I drew a throwing blade and hurled it at Necrull. It sang through the air, embedding itself in his skull. He reached up, casually plucked it out, and dropped it so it clattered on the floor. Then he rotated to face me. I could hear the others come up behind me.

"I can sense your power, heroes," grated Necrull, "and it's delicious. I will change your life energy into Necrullitic Energy. Then, I will be unstoppable!"

"Get him!" I yelled, leaping through the air at Necrull and popping my claws. I plunged them into his cadaverous chest where his heart would be, but they just tore through dead flesh, leaving gaping holes as I yanked them out and somersaulted backward. Nightfox came in right behind me, swiping with her staff. She knocked his gruesome head askew, but it promptly straightened itself. Then Black Mist followed up with a sword thrust to Necrull's chest, which had no more effect than my claws. Lynx sailed over us, landed behind Necrull, whirled, and slashed across his back. He didn't even seem to notice as he raised his hands and black tendrils shot forth from his fingers, striking Nightfox, Black Mist, and me and making us all gasp and shudder. They felt just like the black bolts that ghost had hit me with back in the Hunter-Patriot camp—little trial runs of death. An icy chill spread through my body as energy left it, and the wounds we'd inflicted on Necrull began sealing up.

"Thou remindest me of my daughter, Hel, the greedy glut," said Loki, glaring balefully at Necrull. "Her hunger for souls was insatiable, and she was loath to let even one escape her grasp. But thou shalt not have these!" He held out his hands before him, built up a magical bolt so bright it hurt to look at, and released it at Necrull, striking him dead center. The necromancer howled in pain or anger—it was hard to tell which. A moment later, Ape-Plus bounded at him, fists raised above his head, bringing them down on Necrull's frail-looking form and smashing him into the ground.

Necrull wasn't remotely close to being finished, though. Snarling, he fired a black bolt at Ape-Plus, knocking the gorilla back into the wall beside Dr. Sciuridae. Then he whirled on Lynx, who backed away from him, eyes wide, ears flattened, mewling like a frightened kitten. I couldn't say that I blamed her. Looking at Necrull was like looking into the face of death itself.

I got to my feet, shivering, my body stiff and cold, and lunged at Necrull's back, burying my claws in it up to my knuckles, the points sticking out through his chest. Necrull made a curious growling sound and spun around, sending me flying across the room to land in front of that purple opening in the far wall. I trembled as I felt the corrupting influence of the Qliphoth permeating my body, something I'd hoped never to feel again. Exposure to the Qliphoth could warp you, both mentally and physically. The longer I was in contact with it, the greater the risk of my going insane, or turning into one of its horrors.

"Loki!" I shouted, as Nightfox and Black Mist attacked Necrull again. "Seal this portal! It's the source of his power!" Loki nodded and then flew toward me, landed in front of the portal, and began chanting and waving his hands, while I got up and ran to rejoin the fight against Necrull.

"No!" cried Necrull, as Loki attempted to shut down his portal to the Qliphoth. He gestured at Nightfox and Black Mist, and they were suddenly stuck to the floor by those writhing, oily black threads. As Necrull turned and flew toward Loki, Nightfox whipped out her grapple gun and fired. The grappling hook caught in the necromancer's tattered cloak, and she hit the retract button, yanking him back toward her. Necrull snarled as he struggled to free himself, and I took advantage of his distraction to run up and slash at him with my claws. I glanced over at Lynx, who was cowering off to one side. "We have to keep him off Loki!" I shouted. She swallowed, nodded, and ran in to assist me, raking her feline claws across Necrull's dessicated chest as she wrinkled her nose at the stench of death rolling off him.

Necrull had clearly had enough of us annoying mortals interfering with his plans. He gestured with one talon-like hand, and a swirling ebon vortex appeared to his right. I immediately felt myself being pulled toward it. I'd encountered this effect before when fighting magical types. It was a pool of pure entropy—anything that fell into it would simply cease to exist. I plunged one of my questionite claws into the stone floor to anchor me against the pull. Lynx squealed in terror as she was drawn toward it, clawing desperately at the floor with her hands and feet. I reached out and grabbed her wrist as she slid by me, and she clung to my arm, eyes wide with terror.

"Hey, asshole!" I heard Ape-Plus growl, and spared a glance in that direction. The huge gorilla was in mid-leap, one mighty fist raised. He smashed that fist into Necrull's ugly face, snapping his head back ninety degrees. On anyone else that would have been instantly fatal, but Necrull just gave an annoyed growl and then plunged his fingers into Ape-Plus's hairy chest. The gorilla gasped, and his muscular body began to wither as his fur turned from black to gray. I stared in horrified fascination as he aged before my eyes and collapsed to the floor at Necrull's feet, his frail form too weak to move.

"Apey!" cried Lynx as the black vortex that had been pulling at us vanished. She sprang to him and knelt, cradling his shriveled form in her arms, while Necrull hovered above them, straightening out his head with both hands. She looked up at the floating necromancer and uttered a feline hiss. "You bastard!" She lunged at him, ripping into his undead flesh with her claws so ferociously that he actually seemed surprised. I knew that wouldn't last, though, so I ran to help her. Black Mist and Nightfox had both managed to escape their bindings—which wasn't surprising, considering they were both ninja—and joined in the attack. At the rate Necrull regenerated, I doubted that even all four of us together were capable of killing him, but at least we were keeping him busy.

Loki shouted in triumph as the portal to the Qliphoth vanished, replaced by blank stone wall. Necrull shrieked in outrage, whirling toward him. Loki turned to face the necromancer, grinning. "Thy link to that vile realm is severed, demon! Thou hast lost! So sayeth Loki, Prince of Asgard!"

"I can reopen it!" Necrull husked. "All I need is souls! Your souls!"

He raised his hand, and those black tendrils appeared and snaked toward Loki. Loki raised his hands in turn, and a glowing mystical shield appeared before him, blocking the tendrils. "Strike now, heroes!" Loki shouted through clenched teeth as he fended off Necrull's attack. "The fiend doth grow weaker by the moment!"

"Thanks, I never would have thought of that!" I said, as my claws tore into Necrull's body.

"Yeah, what do you think we've been doing, playing tiddlywinks?" asked Nightfox, slamming her staff down on his back.

Necrull's wounds were no longer healing up, and with Lynx, Nightfox, Black Mist, and me hacking and pounding on him, he was clearly weakening. Finally, with a groan of despair, he sank to the floor of the cave and lay still. As we all stood over him, panting, his body crumbled into dust. Loki walked over and kicked what was left of him with his fur boots, laughing as he sprayed dust and Necrull's ragged clothes across the floor of the cave. "Farewell, Necrull! Thou wilt not be missed!"

A feeble moan from Ape-Plus reminded us that he was still with us, at least for the moment. Lynx, Nightfox, and I ran to the aged gorilla and knelt beside him, Lynx sobbing as she squeezed his withered hand.

I glanced back at Loki. "Apple dust, please."

"Why?" he asked. "We need him no more, and my bag doth grow light."

"He helped us beat Necrull," I growled.

"Then let the skalds sing his praises," said Loki, with a shrug. "I care not."

I rose and walked over to him, scowling. "Is this Asgardian honor? To abandon your allies?"

Loki folded his arms. "Was he not ready to abandon us?"

"But he didn't," said Nightfox. "He came through."

Lynx got to her feet, glaring at Loki. "Heal him, you creep!"

Loki smirked. "And what wilt thou do if I refuse?"

I gazed up at him coldly. "Take that bag from you by force."

He looked surprised. "Wouldst thou?"

I nodded. "I wouldst."

He gazed at me for a moment, then grinned, walked over to Ape-Plus, reached into his belt pouch, and sprinkled some of that golden dust on him. At once, the gorilla's youth returned. Lynx threw her arms around the ape's massive body, crying with relief.

"Thank you," I said.

Loki turned to face me. "'Twas better I do it than thee. Thou might have used too much and turned him into a babe." He grinned at me again. "Thou art bold, Nightmunk. Thou wouldst have made a good Viking."

I shook my head. "I'd look silly in horns." I looked over at Dr. Sciuridae and saw that Black Mist had cut his bonds during our little drama and was helping him over to us. "How are you feeling?" I asked my not-brother.

Dr. Sciuridae looked at me with weary, bloodshot eyes. "Wonderful. Next stupid question?"

I turned to Ape-Plus. "Would you mind carrying him? He's had a rough day."

"Sure, no problem," the gorilla replied, scooping up the little chipmunk in his huge arms.

"Okay, let's get the hell out of here," I said.

As we began walking back toward the entrance, Nightfox leaned over to me and whispered, "By the way, Vikings didn't have horns."

"I know that," I replied.

"You'd look really cute in a fur loincloth, though."

I nodded. "Alvin the Barbarian."

"Want to try that sometime?"

"I'll think about it."

We emerged from Burial Butte, and I radioed Mark Derringer, who flew in with the chopper to pick us up. There was no sign of any bigfoots. Apparently, with Necrull gone, they no longer had any reason to hang around. We climbed aboard the chopper and flew back to Steelhead, landing on its big helipad. Ape-Plus, Lynx, and Black Mist were taken into custody; Dr. Sciuridae was wheeled off to the infirmary; Derringer went to make his report to his superiors; and Nightfox, Loki and I went to the mess hall to down some beer.

"Well, at least that's over with," said Nightfox, knocking back a bottle of Labatt.

"Yeah," I said, "but Dr. Sciuridae's still here, so we're not finished yet." I glanced over at Loki. "How are you for apple dust?"

He shrugged. "There is some left. Not much."

"Any chance you could get more?"

He shook his head. "'Twas hard enough getting this!"

Nightfox nodded. "Those golden apples don't grow on trees, you know."

Loki looked at her, puzzled. "Certainly they do! Where else would apples grow?" Then his eyes widened, and he grinned. "Ah, I see! Thou wert jesting! A fine wit, indeed!"

"I'm gonna go check on the doc," I said, hopping down from my chair.

"I hope you don't mind if I stay behind," said Nightfox.

"Actually, I'd prefer to be alone with him," I replied.

"Excellent well!" said Loki, smacking the table. "Sit with me for a time, Nightfox, and tell me of Midgard. I am keen to learn."

I left her to educate him and headed off to the infirmary.

I entered the infirmary to find Dr. Sciuridae being tended to by an Asian woman in a lab coat, one of Steelhead's medical staff. He was sitting bare-chested on an examination table while she took his blood pressure. He already looked quite a bit better than he had in Necrull's cave.

"Is one-sixty over one-ten normal for a chipmunk manimal?" she asked him.

"It's a little high," he replied, "but that's to be expected, considering." He grinned at her, his big buck teeth gleaming.

She smirked and pressed her stethoscope to his furry chest. "Your heart rate's elevated, but I suppose that's normal, too."

"Only when I'm around beautiful women," he said. "By the way, what are you doing when you get off work?"

"Sleeping," she replied. "Alone."

Sciuridae shook his head. "What a pity."

"You can get dressed now," she said, turning to record the data on the laptop that was sitting on the counter as he started putting his body armor back on.

"How is he, Doc?" I asked, walking over to her.

"Well, there's nothing wrong with his libido, that's for sure."

"Give me a break," said Sciuridae, pulling on his gloves. "I just had a near-death experience."

I glanced at him. "I seem to recall you talking about sex quite a lot with your future wife back on Multifaria."

He glared at me as he hopped down off the table.

"As far as I can tell," said the doctor, "he seems to be all right. Of course, I'm not exactly certain what constitutes 'normal' for someone with his physiology."

I nodded. "Well, if he drops dead, I'll give you a call."

"Thanks. I look forward to performing the autopsy."

I turned to Sciuridae. "Come on, Romeo."

We left the infirmary together.

"Nice of you to let her know I'm married," said Sciuridae sourly as we walked along the corridor.

"Just being my brother's keeper," I replied.

"I'm not your brother!" he snapped. "And even if I were, my personal life still wouldn't be any of your business!"

I shrugged. "You're absolutely right. It's none of my concern who you sleep with."

"Thank you!"

"But as long as we're on the subject," I said, "there's something I've been wanting to ask you."

"Let me guess," he said. "You want to know about your other self."

I sighed. "You always were the smart one."

He smirked. "It didn't take a genius intellect to know you'd be curious about that. Frankly, I'm surprised you waited this long."

"We've been a little busy." I led him into an empty conference room, closed the door, and turned to face him. "So, how did I die?"

Sciuridae was silent for a long moment. "You know Alvin and I were part of Father Elk's rebellion against Dr. Moreau on Monster Island," he said, finally.

"Yes, I remember you mentioning that. You also said Theodore sided with Moreau."

He nodded. "Alvin was one of Elk's field commanders. I was his strategist. I decided which units went where."

"Makes sense," I said. "You had the brains for it."

"During the attack on Moreau's compound, your—I mean Alvin's—unit got cut off from the main force. They were surrounded, outnumbered. I could have sent reinforcements to assist them, but we needed every manimal for the attack. I . . . had to make a choice."

"And you chose the attack," I said.

He nodded again. "I figured if the compound fell quickly, I could send some troops to rescue you—I mean, him. All he had to do was hold out." His voice tightened. "But the battle took longer than I expected. Once the compound was secure, I personally led the rescue force. I could see you—him—across the battlefield. He was alone, covered in blood, holding off a dozen manimals twice his size with his spear. He screamed at them, 'Is this all you've got?' And then . . ." He stopped and hugged himself, his body trembling.

I put my hand on his shoulder and squeezed it gently. He looked at me, his eyes glittering behind his goggles. "It was the right decision!" he said. "If the attack had failed, all those deaths would have been for nothing! The fighting would have continued, and more manimals would have died! It saved many lives!"

I nodded. "You had to think of the big picture."

He looked at me desperately. "I would have done anything, Alvin . . ."

"I believe you, Simon," I said. I put my arms around him, and he around me, and we stood like that for a time as he wept.

Eventually, he let go of me, lifted his goggles, and rubbed at his eyes. "I'm sorry. I didn't think it would affect me like this . . . after all these years."

"I'm kind of glad it did," I said. "It shows you have a heart."

He looked at me, then shrugged. "I'm going to go back to my room to take a nap. Call me if you need me." And with that, he left. I went out into the corridor and headed back to the mess hall.

When I arrived, Loki and Nightfox were still sitting at their table. Loki was slouching in his chair with a sour expression on his boyish face, glaring at his beer mug, his arms folded petulantly across his chest, as Nightfox took a gulp from her own beer, her face mask pulled up to expose her mouth.

"How's Dr. Sciuridae?" she asked, her back still to me. I wasn't surprised. I'd been living with her long enough to know she didn't need to see me to know I was there.

"Well enough to flirt with his doctor," I replied.

"I'm shocked, do you hear, shocked," she said blandly.

I hopped up into a chair. "What's the matter with him?" I asked, indicating Loki.

Nightfox grinned. "He's mad because he doesn't have a day of the week named for him."

Loki growled. "Odin hath one, and Freya, and Tyr, and e'en my idiot brother, Thor! But not poor Loki. He hath been forgotten." He slouched deeper in his chair.

"I wouldn't say that," I said. "Wagner included you in his Ring of the Nibelung operas, and there've been lots of books and movies and TV shows about you. Anyway, what do you care if us mere mortals remember you? You're a god."

Loki gave me a disdainful look. "Gods thrive upon worship. 'Tis our food and drink. Each time our names are spoken, we grow stronger."

Nightfox stared at him. "You mean whenever someone mentions Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, one of those gods becomes more powerful?"

Loki nodded. "Now dost thou see the reason for mine ire?"

"That's why you're a child!" I said, realization dawning. "You're starved for worship!"

Loki gave me a look of anger and embarrassment, and I knew I'd guessed right.

"That doesn't make any sense," said Nightfox. "There must be far more people speaking his name today than there were a thousand years ago."

"Maybe it has to do with the strength of belief," I said. "The Vikings actually believed Loki was real. Most people today don't." I looked at him. "Is that why you're here? To get people to believe in you again?"

Loki opened his mouth to reply, then his eyes went wide, and he cried out, grasping his head and trembling. I saw that Nightfox was also being affected, gripping the edge of the table, her jaw clenched. I looked around the mess hall. Nobody else seemed to be bothered by whatever it was Loki and Nightfox were sensing. I sighed. More magic.

"What just happened?" I asked, when they both seemed to have recovered.

Nightfox shook her head. "Incredible! It was like a mystical atom bomb went off! I've never felt anything like it!"

Loki nodded. "Something with power vast and wicked hath forced its way into this world!"

"Shadow Destroyer?" I asked Nightfox.

"I don't think so," she replied. "It didn't feel like him."

At that moment, Thundrax came running into the mess hall. He was a handsome, muscular man with blond hair, wearing a white bodysuit with red boots and gloves, red lightning bolts along his arms and legs, and a red maple leaf on his chest. His eyes fixed on us. "Did you feel that?" he asked.

"They did," I said, indicating Nightfox and Loki.

Thundrax nodded. "Ravenspeaker told me that the barriers between dimensions have been weakened in this area over the past few days by the storm and by Necrull's activities. Seems like something has decided to take advantage of it. The disturbance came from the north. I'm going to check it out." Then he smiled. "By the way, nice to see you again, Nightmunk." And with that, he rose into the air and flew out the way he'd come in.

"Who was that?" asked Loki, looking puzzled.

"Thundrax, Canada's greatest hero," I replied.

Loki frowned. "I like him not."

Nightfox grinned. "Remind you of someone you know?"

Loki simply scowled at her.

"We should collect Derringer and Sciuridae," I said, "and fly north in a chopper to find out what's going on."

"Sounds like a plan," said Nightfox.

We left the mess hall to implement it.

Ten minutes later, we were in a Steelhead helicopter heading north, with Mark Derringer at the controls and Dr. Scuiridae in the copilot's seat. Turns out Sciuridae also knew how to fly a helicopter, not that I was terribly surprised by that. I watched him as we flew along above the Canadian wilderness. Was there any chance we might become friends? Did he even care about such things? He clearly still blamed himself for the death of my Multifarian counterpart, even though his decision had been a logical one. A brother's love is a brother's love. We weren't brothers; we hadn't grown up together or shared the same experiences. I'd become a hero, while he'd been an enforcer for a ruthless tyrant. But I couldn't deny that I had feelings for him, and he obviously had feelings for me. He'd been practically begging me for forgiveness when he'd told me how his brother had died. And we both carried the same sense of loss. Maybe we could help heal each other's wounds.

"We're coming up on Lynx Fold," said Derringer, dragging me back to the business at hand.

I blinked. "What?"

He chuckled. "Don't worry, it's nothing to do with her. It's a valley in these mountains. Ravenspeaker says it's a place of great mystical power, where the four spirits of the land meet."

Dr. Sciuridae surveyed the valley with his telescopic goggles. "All the trees are dead," he commented. "The whole place looks completely lifeless." Then he gasped. "Holy shit!"

I whipped out my mini-binoculars and held them to my eyes. Ahead, through clouds of mist, I could discern the shape of a colossal horned figure. Derringer had a pair of binoculars out, too, and I heard his sharp intake of breath when he saw it.

"Good lord!" he cried out. "He's here!"
"Who?" asked Sciuridae.

"Kigatilik!"

I peered through my binoculars at the enormous figure looming in the mist ahead. It stood around fifty feet tall, with gray skin, yellow eyes, and a massive chest with reddish-brown hair. A pair of twisted horns protruded from either side of its head, and sticking up from its back were a number of poles topped with skulls that were far too big to have come from human heads. Maybe they were the skulls of other gods. Its forearms were wrapped in leather strips. Around its waist was a belt, lined with more skulls, from which hung a loincloth that came down to its knees. Its legs resembled those of a goat or deer or some other such animal, covered with reddish-brown fur and terminating in gigantic cloven hooves. It stood atop a square stone platform about twenty feet on a side, with stairs leading up to the top and great stone fangs that curved up above its occupant. I lowered my binoculars, staring at this monstrosity out of the prehistoric past.

"Are you sure that's Kigatilik?" I asked Derringer.

He nodded. "Ravenspeaker showed me an Inuit carving of him once. It looked just like that."

"The temperature's dropping," Dr. Sciuridae commented, indicating the cloud of his own breath before his mouth in the helicopter's heated cockpit.

"Chief Whiteclaw said he was the demon god of devouring cold," said Nightfox.

I shook my head. "How in hell do we fight something like that?"

"There is Thundrax!" said Loki, pointing off to the right. "And he is beset!"

I looked where Loki was pointing. Thundrax's red-and-white form was on the ground, facing off against four of those dog-like nether demons, only these were much larger than the ones Dr. Sciuridae and I had fought at the plane crash site, being about ten feet long and standing at least five feet high at the shoulder. Apart from that, they were identical to the ones I'd seen before, with blue-and-white hairless bodies, huge taloned feet, two pairs of eyes, and impossibly wide mouths lined with long, sharp teeth. As we watched, one of them lunged at the Canadian hero, clamping its jaws down on his arm. Thundrax threw it off, sending it flying away, but the other three closed in around him.

"Looks like he could use some help," I said. "Bring us down, Mark."

Derringer maneuvered the chopper toward the embattled hero, and Nightfox, Loki, Dr. Sciuridae, and I jumped out the side door, landing in the knee-deep snow. Sciuridae was out of grenades, but his rifle was fully charged, and he blasted one of the nether demons with beams of hot plasma while Nightfox and I took on another and Loki fired mystical bolts at the third. My questionite claws tore into my opponent's blue-and-white flesh, drawing no blood. It scarcely seemed to notice, snatching me up in its jaws and shaking me like a rag doll. Only my armored costume saved me from being bitten in half. Sciuridae turned his rifle on it, blowing holes through its boneless, organless body and causing it to drop me. The thing turned toward him, growling, and he backed away, firing as he retreated. The demon charged at the little chipmunk manimal, but before it could reach him, Thundrax flew in and delivered a mighty blow that knocked it back about fifty feet. Through all this, Kigatilik remained standing on his platform, paying not the slightest attention, as if we were beneath his notice, ants squabbling in the dirt at his feet. Then I saw that all four of the nether demons had regrouped and were coming at us again.

"My friends," Loki shouted, "we are outmatched! We must needs withdraw!" He laid down his sigils of ebon weakness, slowing the demons, and Nightfox and I turned and ran, kicking up snow, while Thundrax, Loki, and Dr. Sciuridae flew along above us. Thundrax scooped up Nightfox and Sciuridae grabbed me, and we all flew into the helicopter, which then wheeled around and headed in the opposite direction from Kigatilik.

"Everyone all right?" asked Derringer from the cockpit.

"Yeah, we're fine," I said bitterly. "Only our egos are wounded."

"We're not out of the woods yet," said Nightfox, who was leaning out the door and looking back. We all went over to her. The nether demons were chasing after us, running through the air as if they were on the ground.

"Shit!" I said. "They can fly!"

We watched anxiously as they closed with us. Then they all abruptly turned and went back to Kigatilik, settling down on the stone platform at their master's feet.

"One hundred thirty-two meters," said Dr. Sciuridae.

I looked at him. "What?"

"That's the distance at which they all gave up the chase and turned back."

"You think they may have some sort of proximity awareness?" asked Nightfox.

"The fact that they all turned back at the same time would tend to support that hypothesis," Sciuridae replied.

"One way to find out," said Thundrax. He flew out and headed back toward Kigatilik as Derringer held the chopper stationary. We all watched as the Canadian hero slowly drew closer and closer to the monstrous figure. All at once, the nether demons began running through the air toward him. Thundrax drew back, and the nether demons promptly abandoned pursuit and returned to their places. Kigatilik still appeared not to notice.

"Exactly one hundred thirty-two meters," said Sciuridae.

"So as long as we stay at least that far away, they'll remain passive," Nightfox said.

Sciuridae nodded. "Looks like it."

"How doth that help us?" asked Loki impatiently.

"It's information," Sciuridae replied. "Information is always useful for something."

"We're gonna need some help," I said. "This is too big for us."

"Help is on the way," said Derringer, "including your friends from the States, the Champions."

I glanced at Dr. Sciuridae. "Well, this should prove interesting."

"How so?" he asked.

I grinned. "You'll be meeting your wife's Earth counterpart, Sapphire."

"Oh, really?" he said, raising an eyebrow.

Loki blinked. "Thou art wed?"

Sciuridae sighed. "Yes, I'm married. Is that really so hard to believe?"

"And he has a bun in the oven," I said. When Loki looked at me blankly, I added, "His wife is pregnant."

Loki chuckled. "Perhaps this Sapphire will find thee comely as well, Doctor!"

"Don't bet on it," said Nightfox. "Sapphire's one of the nicest people I know."

Sciuridae shrugged. "I can be nice."

Nightfox just looked at him. "Sure you can."

"I'm going to set the chopper down outside the demons' perimeter," said Derringer. "No point in wasting fuel."

We landed in a clearing a couple hundred yards from Kigatilik, and Thundrax flew down to join us. The air was bitingly cold, but neither Thundrax nor Loki seemed bothered by it, while Nightfox and I had heating elements built into our body armor, and I assume Dr. Sciuridae did too, since he seemed to be fine. Derringer remained in the heated interior of the helicopter. And so we settled down to wait.

As we waited for reinforcements to arrive, Nightfox came over and sat down on a log beside me. "How are you doing?" she asked quietly.

I shrugged. "As well as can be expected."

She nodded. "Must be tough, seeing him again." She indicated Dr. Sciuridae, who was standing atop a high rock some distance away, looking at Kigatilik.

I looked up at her. "Is it wrong that I want us to be friends?"

"It's understandable," she said, "but I don't think it's possible. He's nothing like the Simon you've described to me."

"I don't deny he's different," I said, "but he's not totally heartless, either. He blames himself for my counterpart's death on Multifaria."

"I bet Frank and Jesse James loved each other, too. That didn't make them good people."

I couldn't argue with that, so I changed the subject. "It feels like it's getting colder."

Nightfox nodded. "Derringer was just on the radio talking to Steelhead about that. They say there's a cold spot centered right on us, and it's getting bigger."

I turned my eyes toward Kigatilik. "You think it's him?"

"It is," came a familiar voice from behind us. We both turned to see Ravenspeaker standing there, along with Chief Whiteclaw and three bigfoot shamans. There were no footprints in the snow around them.

"I was wondering where you'd gotten to," I said. "Hello, again, Chief." The white bigfoot simply nodded.

"I have been marshalling our forces," replied Ravenspeaker. "We will need every hero we can get for this. Kigatilik hates all that is warm and lives. If he is not stopped, he will cover the world in ice."

"Not that we don't want to help," I said, "but what can Nightfox and I do against a god? We're just a couple of street-level heroes."

"I've been thinking about that," said Dr. Sciuridae, walking over to us. "I've been observing Kigatilik, and I've noticed something. He's not really there."

I blinked. "He's not?"

"For one thing, he doesn't cast a shadow. For another, the wind isn't going around him, it's going through him."

"So he's like a ghost," said Nightfox.

Ravenspeaker nodded. "Then he has not fully materialized in this dimension."

"Well, those four nether demons around him are solid enough," said Thundrax, who had come over to join us, along with Loki and Derringer.

"Yeah, one of them tried to bite me in half!" I said.

"The hounds of Kigatilik are extensions of his spirit," said Ravenspeaker, "like the fingers of a hand."

Sciuridae's eyes widened behind his goggles. "Then they could be the key to defeating him!"

I looked at him. "How do you figure?"

He grinned, buck teeth gleaming. "Simple physics. Nature abhors a vacuum. Kigatilik isn't a creature of flesh and blood, he's a spirit, and the hounds are a part of him. If we destroy the hounds, he should be pulled into this world!"

Loki's mouth fell open. "Art thou mad, Sciuridae? Why in Odin's name would we do that?"

Sciuridae looked at him exasperatedly, as though he were addressing a slow-witted child. "Because then the dimensional rift will be open, and we can force him back through!" He rubbed his chin. "The problem will be keeping the hounds busy while we're doing it."

"But, you said the hounds would be destroyed," said Nightfox, confused.

"They won't stay dead," said Sciuridae, "not as long as Kigatilik exists."

"We can't fight the hounds and Kigatilik simultaneously," said Thundrax.

"No," said Sciuridae, musingly. "But if they could be controlled . . ."

An idea dawned on me. "Like, by a mentalist?"

Sciuridae nodded. "That could work."

I glanced at Nightfox, and I could see she had the same idea I did. She ran into the helicopter and got on the radio to Steelhead.

"Who is she calling?" asked Sciuridae.

"The guy I came to Canada to see," I replied. "Richard Tarrell."

Thundrax raised an eyebrow. "The telepath?"

I nodded. "He helped me put my head back together after I was brainwashed by PSI—the Parapsychological Studies Institute."

"I've heard of them," said Derringer. "Nasty bunch."

"Yeah, and they made me do some nasty things. But Tarrell pulled out all their wiring. I'm myself again." I noticed Sciuridae looking at me with an odd expression on his furry face, a mixture of curiosity and regret. "Something bugging you, Doc?" I asked.

He shook his head. "No, nothing important. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to take some readings." He activated his jetpack and flew toward Kigatilik.

"Are you two related?" Thundrax asked me.

I sighed. "It's complicated."

"Aye," said Loki, grinning. "This I know too well."

Nightfox emerged from the helicopter. "It's all arranged," she announced. "Dr. Tarrell has agreed to help, and the Champions are going to detour to his cabin to pick him up."

I remembered that cabin, a cozy little place in the north woods, quiet and tranquil, with nobody around for miles, the perfect place to rebuild your sanity after a gang of criminal psychics had raped your mind and turned you into their obedient automaton. Even now, the thought of what PSI had done to me filled me with the deepest, darkest rage I'd ever felt in my life, even worse than when my brothers had died. I blocked it out and concentrated on when Julie and I had been cuddled up before the cabin's crackling fireplace. That had been nice.

Twenty minutes later, the whine of jet turbines grew in our ears as a sleek, gleaming, white aircraft with a gold letter C emblazoned on the underside flew in from the north, came to a stop in midair, and then slowly sank toward the ground, setting down a short distance from us. This was the Slingshot, the supersonic VTOL belonging to the Champions. A door in the side opened, and from it emerged Justiciar, along with five of the most famous people on the planet. First came Defender, leader of the Champions, in his blue-and-white battle armor. Next came Witchcraft, a young woman with long red hair, wearing a green tunic and cape clasped with gold medallions. Then Kinetik, a tall, handsome black man wearing goggles and a scarlet-and-black costume emblazoned with white lightning bolts. Then Sapphire, a lovely Latina woman wearing an aquamarine jacket, shorts, and thigh-high boots, her silky black hair hanging down to her waist. Then Ironclad, a metal-skinned giant wearing a vaguely Roman-style bronze helmet, kilt, and greaves, a massive gladius clutched in his right hand, his left shoulder covered by a bronze pauldron, his left hand sheathed in a heavy bronze gauntlet. His dull metallic skin bore numerous gashes, mementos of past battles. Beside Ironclad walked a smaller version of himself dressed exactly the same way, his skin lacking gashes. This was his twelve-year-old son, Ironkid. Finally, looking quite out of place, came an ordinary-looking bespectacled man with short, brown hair, graying at the temples, wearing a purple snowsuit. His name was Dr. Richard Tarrell, telepathic psychiatrist.

"Well," said Tarrell, looking over the assemblage of heroes with interest, "this is an impressive sight!"

"You want impressive," I said, "take a look at that." I pointed at Kigatilik.

Defender nodded, gazing up at the god on the hill. "He's big, but we've beaten bigger."

"Nice to see you again, Bethany," said Ravenspeaker, smiling at Witchcraft.

"Likewise, Ravenspeaker," she replied. These mystical types always seemed to know each other.

Ironkid was staring at Whiteclaw and his shamans. "Are those bigfoots?" he asked, seeming more amazed by them than by Kigatilik.

Whiteclaw smiled at the boy and nodded. "I am Whiteclaw, chief of the Chiyetah tribe, and these are my shamans, Eyes-Of-Tomorrow, Talks-To-Spirits, and Torch-Burning-Brightly." They each nodded curtly.

"Cool, you can talk!" said Ironkid, grinning excitedly. Though his father was an alien, his mother was human, and he had been born and raised on Earth and acted more or less like a normal kid, despite having metal skin like his dad.

"Sowhat'stheplan?" asked Kinetik, the speedster speaking in that rapid-fire way he did when he was excited.

"Ask him," said Derringer, gesturing at Dr. Sciuridae, who was flying toward us from the direction of Kigatilik. He landed in the middle of the group and switched off his jetpack.

"So, this is Dr. Sciuridae," said Sapphire, speaking with a slight Spanish accent and smiling at him.

Sciuridae nodded, looking over the Champions. "And you're this dimension's versions of my old teammates, the Conquerors. Interesting." I noticed that his eyes lingered on Sapphire.

"You mean the ones whose butts we kicked?" Ironkid asked belligerently. He'd been one of the heroes who had traveled to Multifaria with me and was none too fond of Sciuridae.

"Be polite, Borlan," said Ironclad, in his deep, reasonant voice. "Dr. Sciuridae is a guest here."

Ironkid frowned, but said nothing.

"The plan involves two phases," said Dr. Sciuridae, ignoring Ironkid's jab. "First, we defeat the hounds of Kigatilik. According to Ravenspeaker, they're parts of him, so destroying them should draw Kigatilik fully into this dimension, where we can actually affect him. Second, we hit the big guy himself and try to force him back into the Frost Tomb. Unfortunately, the hounds won't stay dead, since they're not really alive in the first place. Kigatilik can recreate them anytime he wants. So while we're dealing with him, Dr. Tarrell here keeps the hounds mentally paralyzed and off our backs." He turned to Tarrell. "You're the lynchpin of this whole operation. If you can't hold the hounds, they'll tear us apart. Can you do it?"

"I'm not sure," Tarrell said uneasily. "One mind, yes, but four at once?"

"If he misses even one of them, he's dead," I pointed out.

"There is a way to find out if he can do it," said Ironclad. "I can lure them toward me, then Dr. Tarrell can attempt to paralyze them. I am the most likely to survive if he fails."

Ironkid's eyes widened. "You mean they could kill you?"

Ironclad shrugged his massive shoulders. "I faced death daily in the interstellar gladiator arena. It holds no fear for me."

I could relate to that, having survived the fight pits on Monster Island. After a while, you become inured to the thought of dying. It's a self-defense mechanism. If you keep dwelling on it, you find yourself sinking into a hole you can't climb out of.

Ironkid swallowed, then straightened. "I want to go with you, dad. I'm just as invulnerable as you are, and I might be able to take some of the heat off you."

Ironclad looked down at his son and smiled gently. "I doubt your mother would approve, and I fear her wrath more than I fear death."

Ironkid scowled. "Mom never approves of anything I do! If it was up to her, I'd be sitting behind a desk in school!"

"Be that as it may," said Ironclad, "I think it would be best if you stayed behind until we have a better idea what we are up against."

Ironkid threw up his hands. "Why did you bring me if you won't let me do anything?"

Ironclad regarded his son seriously. "To learn." He turned to Tarrell. "Ready when you are, Doctor."

Tarrell nodded, looking nervous. "Proceed."

Ironclad began walking toward the towering figure of Kigatilik that stood on the stone platform with the hounds sitting at his feet. The rest of us all watched apprehensively—all save Dr. Sciuridae, that is, who was busy counting down the shrinking distance between Ironclad and Kigatilik. "One hundred fifty meters . . . one hundred forty-five . . . one hundred forty . . . one hundred thirty-five . . . get ready, Doctor Tarrell . . . one hundred thirty-two!"

Instantly, the hounds sprang to life and began running toward the comparatively puny gleaming metal figure of Ironclad, who raised his bronze-armored left arm defensively. As they closed in on him, Tarrell furrowed his brow, concentrating, and all four hounds froze in their tracks, just a few feet from the alien Champion. We all breathed a sigh of relief, particularly Ironkid, who had been trembling with anxiety, ready to run to his father's side if need be.

Ironclad stepped up to the nearest hound and smacked it across its snout with the flat of his blade. The demon blinked its four eyes, then lifted its head and opened its impossibly wide mouth to howl. Ironclad smacked it again, and it snarled and lunged at him. He parried with his left arm and began backing away from it, drawing it toward him and away from the other three.

"Go!" shouted Defender, his rocket boots blazing as he led the charge. Naturally, Kinetik arrived first, because nobody gets anywhere faster than him, and began hammering on the hound with his fists, striking it hundreds of times a second. I'd seen him reduce a brick wall to rubble this way in the time it took to draw a breath. Next came searing hot beams of plasma from Defender's gloves, Justiciar's cybernetic arm, and Dr. Sciuridae's rifle, followed by a shattering force blast from Sapphire and a fusillade of bullets from Mark Derringer's machine gun. Shards of ice shot from the hands of the three bigfoot shamans, tearing into the hound's side, and Thundrax flew over it, bringing both scarlet-gloved fists down on its head with a crash that, unsurprisingly, echoed through the valley like thunder. Magical hex bolts from Ravenspeaker, Witchcraft, and Loki weakened the hound still further. By the time Ironkid, Chief Whiteclaw, Nightfox, and I arrived, the hound looked as if it was on its last legs, swaying unsteadily. We laid into it with sword, fist, staff, and claws, and it collapsed, lying there with that vile-smelling green fluid that passes for blood in those things pouring out over the snow.

"That's one down!" Ironclad proclaimed triumphantly.

"How are you holding up, Doctor?" Defender called to Tarrell.

"Hanging in there," Tarrell replied, strain evident in his voice. "Hurry up and finish off the others!"

Ironclad strode toward the next nearest hound, bapped it on the nose as he had the previous one, and drew it away from the other two. It went down even faster, since this time we were all starting close to it. We quickly repeated the process for the third and fourth ones.

When the fourth hound hit the ground, several things happened. First, the temperature dropped noticeably. Second, the sky grew darker. Third, an icy, cutting wind began blowing the snow around, creating whiteout conditions, the flakes stinging when they struck exposed skin. Finally, a deep voice boomed in our ears over the howl of the wind. "You have bested the least of my servants," it said. "That shall be your final triumph!" I looked up at Kigatilik. He was glaring down at us, his glowing eyes narrowed beneath his heavy brow. Apparently, we'd finally gotten his attention. He raised one gigantic hand, its claw-like nails outstretched, and a bolt of ice shot from his palm, striking Ironclad and sending him skidding on his back through the snow at least a hundred feet. Simultaneously, all four hounds sprang back to life, fully restored, and began chasing after us.

"Withdraw and regroup!" shouted Defender, snatching up Nightfox and me and bearing us aloft, with one of the hounds hot on our tail. I looked back at that gaping fanged maw just a few feet behind us, the theme from Jaws running through my head as it closed the gap. Just as it looked as if it was about to bite down on Defender's legs, we passed the one-hundred-thirty-two-meter-mark, and it gave up and turned back as I tried to remember how breathing worked.

"Dad!" cried Ironkid, running to his father, who was lying on his back in the snow. Ironclad's breathing was ragged and labored, as if he were struggling to force air in and out of his lungs. His son knelt beside him, trembling and hugging himself, and looked up at us desperately. "Please, help him!"

Witchcraft crouched down beside Ironclad and placed her hands on his metal chest. Her hands began to glow, and Ironclad's breathing became easier. She stood up, gazing down at him sadly. "I'm afraid that's all I can do for now," she said. "He needs more attention than I can give. I don't think I've ever seen him hurt this badly before."

"Well, that's phase one complete, anyway," remarked Dr. Sciuridae.

Ironkid jumped up, glaring at him. "You asshole! Your brilliant plan almost got my dad killed!"

Sciuridae regarded the boy coldly. "I don't recall saying there wouldn't be casualities."

"You don't even care!" Ironkid accused him.

"No, I don't. To stop Kigatilik, I'm prepared to sacrifice your father's life, your life, my life, and the lives of everyone here, if necessary. And if your father is half the man his Multifarian counterpart is, he'd be the first to agree with me!"

Ironkid's hand went to the hilt of his sword, and it was halfway out of its scabbard before Thundrax seized the boy's arm, stopping him. "Calm down, Borlan," he said. Ironkid cried out and threw his arms around Thundrax, hugging him and sobbing, while the Canadian hero patted the boy's back gently.

"Give him a break," I said to Dr. Sciuridae. "He just saw his father badly wounded."

Sciuridae glanced at me. "Ironclad said he brought the boy here to learn. The first lesson of war is people get hurt."

I scowled at him. While I couldn't deny that he was essentially correct, there was no need to be so callous, especially with a twelve-year-old boy. But I suppose that was expecting too much of him. "So, how do we execute phase two?" I asked quietly.

"That's going to require some split-second timing," Sciuridae replied.

Kinetik grinned. "For me, a split second is a long time."

"Yeah, I measured your speed," said Sciuridae. "You're every bit as fast as your Multifarian counterpart, Oubliette. We need you to lure the hounds away from Kigatilik and toward Dr. Tarrell so he can paralyze them. At the same time, someone has to get Kigatilik's attention to keep him from blasting Tarrell. Then, while he's distracted, the rest of us dogpile him."

"Do you think we can actually hurt him?" asked Justiciar dubiously.

"Not exactly," Sciuridae replied. "He isn't flesh and blood, he's a spirit being. But if we hammer him with sufficient force, we may be able to push him back through the dimensional rift he opened to come here from the Frost Tomb."

Defender glanced at Witchcraft. "What do you think, Beth?"

"Dr. Sciuridae's plan is theoretically sound," Witchcraft replied. "Of course, Ravenspeaker is the real expert." She turned to the Native American. "Can this be done?"

"I'd say you've got a halfway decent shot," Ravenspeaker replied.

"Then all that remains is to decide who's going to keep Kigatilik distracted," said Defender.

Ironkid immediately stepped forward. "I'll do it!"

Defender shook his head. "Absolutely not. I'm not pitting a child against that monster." He turned to Thundrax. "What about you, Craig?"

"I'm willing to give it a try," Thundrax replied, "but think I should mention I'm not as tough as Ironclad."

"We really want the most invulnerable person to go," said Sciuridae.

Defender glared at him. "You stay out of this!"

Sciuridae's eyes narrowed behind his goggles. "Fine, don't blame me if Kigatilik kills us all, which is a very real possibility!"

"You know if my dad wasn't down for the count you'd be sending him," said Ironkid, looking up at Defender accusingly, "and I'm just as invulnerable as he is!"

"And look what happened to him!" Defender retorted.

"It's getting colder," commented Mark Derringer. "We need to act soon."

Defender looked agonized at the thought of possibly sending a twelve-year-old boy to his death, and I felt for him. This was the part of being a leader that really sucked: making decisions that could get people killed. I'd been forced to assume the role of leader on Multifaria simply because I was the member of the team with the most experience, and it hadn't been any fun. Fortunately, I'd never been put in a situation like this.

"Very well," said Defender, sighing.

"All right!" shouted Ironkid, grinning and pumping his fist.

"Get ready, Kinetik!" said Defender. The speedster nodded, crouching down. "On your signal, Dr. Sciuridae!"

Sciuridae nodded, his gaze focused on the colossal horned figure of Kigatilik, who was still standing atop the stone platform with the hounds around his hooved feet. "Go!"

Kinetik became a scarlet blur stretching from us to the platform. The demon god raised a hand and fired a bolt of ice, which missed completely, causing an eruption of dirt and snow where it struck. Kinetik whizzed past the hounds, who sprang to their feet and gave chase, bounding after him. He weaved to avoid Kigatilik's blasts, running slow enough for the hounds to keep up with him, leading them toward Dr. Tarrell.

"Go!" Dr. Sciuridae shouted at Ironkid, who tensed and jumped, sailing through the air in a parabolic arc that landed him on the platform squarely behind Kigatilik. He drew his blade and slashed at the demon god's tree-trunk legs. Kigatilik whirled with astonishing speed for such an immense creature. At exactly the same moment, Dr. Tarrell psionically paralyzed all four of the hounds. They stood there like ice sculptures on the snow, blue-white bodies gleaming.

"Who are you, little fool, to attack a god?" asked Kigatilik, staring down at the tiny metal figure before him.

"Borlan Lar, son of Drogan!" Ironkid shouted up at him. "And I'm not afraid of you!" Kigatilik simply growled and aimed his hand at the boy, building up an ice bolt, while Ironkid raised his sword defensively.

"Go!" shouted Dr. Sciuridae, activating his jet pack and flying toward them, the rest of us right behind. Kigatilik unleashed his ice bolt, which smashed into the young warrior. It struck his blade, shattering and spraying shards of ice in all directions, while Ironkid stood there, unmoved. A moment later, every attack in the world hammered Kigatilik from behind, and he groaned and staggered forward.

"Keep hitting him!" screamed Dr. Sciuridae, blasting away with his plasma rifle, not that anyone needed encouragement. Kigatilik slowly turned, a surprised expression on his skull-like face, unbalanced by the ferocity of our attacks, and I reflected that he'd probably never experienced anything like this before. For my part, I was slashing at his legs with my questionite talons, Nightfox and Chief Whiteclaw on either side of me.

I glanced back over my shoulder to see how Dr. Tarrell was doing, and my stomach clenched. One of the hounds had managed to shake off his mental control and was moving slowly toward him. I broke away from the fight and ran toward the rogue hound, readying a throwing blade. Over the past few weeks, Tarrell hadn't just removed PSI's programming from my brain, he'd restored my confidence in myself. I owed him big time for that. I hurled my blade at the rhinoceros-sized hound, and it struck the thing's side, releasing a torrent of that green fluid. Its head jerked around and it gazed at me with its four eyes for a moment, its huge, fanged mouth hanging open. Then it charged.

My options were limited. I'd used up all my particle bombs, my sleep gas pellets had no effect on these things, and they had no particular weak spots, as they lacked a brain, a nervous system, and internal organs. I'd just have to tough this out. I raised my claws defensively and braced for impact.

The hound plowed into me like a freight train, knocking the wind out of me and clamping its massive jaws around my middle. Again, my armor saved me from being bitten in half, but my chest felt as if it were being squeezed in a vise. I couldn't draw breath, and the pain was excruciating. I rammed my claws into the side of its ugly head, but that didn't seem to bother it much. Then it shook me like a dog worrying its favorite chew toy, and I felt myself blacking out.

Through the darkening fog, I heard the sound of Dr. Sciuridae's rifle, and a bright beam of hot plasma seared past my cheek, burning a hole through the hound's body. As before, the hound dropped me into the snow and whirled toward Sciuridae, who was hovering about a hundred feet away and twenty feet up. He turned and bolted, and the hound ran after him through the air. This time, however, there was no Thundrax to come to his rescue. The hound seized Sciuridae's legs in its mouth, shook him vigorously, then hurled him toward the ground. His body struck a rock with a bone-crunching impact, and he lay there, motionless.

I screamed incoherently and hurled a throwing blade at the hound, striking it dead center as it stood there in midair. It turned and came bounding toward me, and I ran to meet it, claws raised. I wasn't thinking clearly at that moment. I just wanted to kill something. I didn't get the chance, however, because just before we reached each other, the hound suddenly faded away. I whirled toward the platform. Kigatilik was gone, forced back into the Frost Tomb by the combined might of the assembled heroes.

I ran to Dr. Sciuridae. He was clearly in bad shape, lying crumpled in the snow with blood dribbling from his mouth, his goggles smashed. I knelt down and fumbled frantically for the coagulant in my utility belt. The image of Simon came to my mind, lying at the bottom of one of Moreau's fight pits, dying in my arms.

"I couldn't let it happen again," Sciuridae said weakly. "I just couldn't."

"Shut up!" I growled, injecting him in the side of his neck.

He grinned, buck teeth gleaming. "That Sapphire chick . . . is pretty hot. Think she'd . . . go out with me?" Then he convulsed, coughing up blood.

"Don't you dare!" I screamed at him, seizing his shoulders. "Don't do this to me!"

He gazed up at me, smiling. "Goodbye, brother. It was nice meeting you." Then he slumped and his eyes went blank.

"No!" I shrieked, gripping his limp body tightly. I threw my arms around him and buried my face against his chest. Then I noticed something sparkling before my eyes. Something gold.

"I say thee nay," came Loki's voice from somewhere above me. I lifted my head, blinking. Dr. Sciuridae's body was sprinkled with glittering golden dust. His eyes opened, and he looked at me in surprise. Then we both looked up at Loki, who was standing over us, shaking an empty leather pouch.

"You brought me back?" Sciuridae asked him, astonished.

Loki grinned and shrugged. "What good is a god an he doth not perform miracles?"

I got to my feet, my throat tight. "Thank you."

Sciuridae rose too, looking at Loki and me uneasily. "Yeah, thanks a lot," he said, sounding subdued.

"You are welcome," Loki replied. "Though you are of different worlds, still you are brothers." Then his grin faded, replaced by a pensive expression. "I envy you."

The others came over to join us. "Well done, heroes!" said Defender. "You all performed outstandingly!" He glanced at Ironkid. "Especially you, Ironkid. Your father would be proud."

Ironkid beamed up at him. "Thank you, sir!"

Defender turned to Dr. Tarrell, who had come over to join us. "Thank you for your assistance, Dr. Tarrell. We couldn't have done this without you."

"You're quite welcome, Defender," the telepathic psychiatrist replied, smiling and looking relieved that this was all over.

"And thank you, Dr. Sciuridae," said Defender, turning to him. "It was your plan that defeated Kigatilik. The people of Earth owe you a debt of gratitude."

Sciuridae glanced around furtively at the assembled heroes, looking uncomfortable. Being treated like a hero was a new experience for him, and he didn't seem to know how to handle it. "You're welcome," he said at last.

"Are you hurt?" asked Witchcraft, looking at him with concern.

Sciuridae shrugged, wiping his mouth. "It's nothing. Just a little blood."

"Perhaps you could stay with us for a while?" asked Sapphire, smiling at him.

Before he could reply, a female voice with a strange reverberating quality said, "I fear that is not possible." We all turned in its direction. A woman in gold and silver armor with glowing blue eyes in a helmeted head and metal wings sticking up from her back was floating toward us, her feet just above the snow.

"Hello, Golden Seraph," said Sciuridae. "I was wondering when you'd show up."
She landed before him, her glowing blue eyes gazing down at him. "Your task here has been completed, Dr. Sciuridae. The darkness has been thwarted, at least for the moment."

"Shadow Destroyer was behind this, wasn't he?" asked Nightfox.

Golden Seraph nodded. "It was he who caused the storm, he who enlisted Rakshasa's aid, and he who gave Necrull his power, all of which contributed to Kigatilik breaking out of the Frost Tomb."

"Then why don't we just go to the Qliphoth and kick his butt?" asked Ironkid. "Nightmunk, Nightfox, Dr. Sciuridae, and I already beat him once."

"He has grown in power since then," Golden Seraph replied. "The time is not yet right to face him on his home ground."

"Why not?" asked Thundrax. "He's only going to get stronger, isn't he?"

"There are things you do not know, Craig Carson," said Golden Seraph. "I must ask you to trust me." She turned to Dr. Sciuridae. "It is time for us to go."

"Just a minute," I said. I walked over to Dr. Sciuridae. "It was good seeing you again, Simon. I hope . . . I hope you can make things better over there."

Sciuridae looked at me, his mouth tight. "I'll do my best," he said quietly. Then Golden Seraph laid her gleaming gloved hand upon his shoulder, there was a flash of light, and they were both gone.

"This hath been excellent sport," said Loki, grinning, "but I must needs take my leave as well." He waved his hands and began to fade out. Then he faded back in. "What is this?" he asked, looking puzzled.

"Something wrong?" asked Ravenspeaker, smiling as though he knew something the rest of us didn't. As Loki tried again, a shadow fell across us. We all looked up to behold the immense, ghostly figure of a bearded man eclipsing the sun. He was dressed in armor and furs and had a patch over one eye.

"Odin!" Nightfox gasped, and a chill ran down my spine.

"What meaneth this, father?" Loki cried indignantly.

The apparition spoke in an impossibly deep voice that rolled over us like distant thunder. "Idunn is most upset with thee, Loki. Didst thou think thy thievery would go unnoticed? Hast thou forgotten what I gave an eye to see? Truly, thy temerity is beyond belief!" His single eye glared down at Loki, and the young godling looked fearful. Then, his expression softened. "However, methinks Midgard hath been a good influence upon thee. Therefore, thou wilt stay a while. That is our decision." And with that, he vanished.

"Father!" Loki screamed at the sky where Odin had been, clenching his fists. "FATHER!" His only reply was the wind.

"Well!" said Defender.

Witchcraft nodded. "That certainly was . . . something."

Ironkid walked over to the distraught godling and put a metal hand on his shoulder, smiling. "I belong to a supergroup made up of kid heroes. As long as you're stuck here, you're welcome to hang out with us."

Loki pushed the hand away, scowling. "Loki of Asgard needeth no one's pity!" He gestured, rose into the air, and flew off.

"Looks like he still has a lot to learn," remarked Justiciar, watching him disappear in the distance.

Mark Derringer nodded. "He has plenty of time to do it in."

"Well, this has been interesting," I said, "but Nightfox and I were on our way back to Millennium City when we got detoured. Mind if we hitch a ride with you guys?" I looked at the Champions hopefully.

"No problem, Nightmunk," replied Defender. "Always glad to help out a friend."

"Before you go, Alvin," said Tarrell, "might I have a word with you?"

"Sure thing, Doc," I replied. I turned to Chief Whiteclaw and his shamans. "Nice meeting you all. If you're ever in Millennium City, look me up."

Whiteclaw chuckled. "I will be sure to do so."

Tarrell and I walked off together, our boots crunching in the snow.

"So, gonna ask me how I'm feeling?" I asked him once we were out of earshot.

"I was just going to comment that you seem to have gotten your confidence back," he said. "And you seem to have gained some sense of closure regarding the deaths of your brothers."

"More like I've discovered a new brother I never knew I had. Dr. Sciuridae will never be my Simon, but that's okay. There's still a bond between us, even if we are worlds apart."

Tarrell nodded. "So, how do you feel?"

I looked up at him and smiled. "I feel good, Doc."

He smiled back. "Then let's go home."

We headed back to the plane together.