"It has been said that there is a stairway to Heaven-but a bullet-train to Hell," whispered Goliath in his deep voice, as the lights of Manhattan rose into the night.
The lamplight on the streets below pooled into islands floating separate in the sea of night. The sidewalks here in the West Side were mostly deserted and the streets were inviolate, save for the passing of a few cars in the darkness. The faces of the apartment buildings were blank and empty…no lights shone here. The brick buildings sleep. There was no movement on the street, no midnight alley cat scrabbling in the trashcans for a meal. There were no police sirens and no gunfire tonight, for once. The silence was stifling…
…and finally broken, as someone stumbled backwards into an exquisite Tiffany lamp in a top floor apartment, causing it to crash to the floor and shatter. The light from the windows here was strange, bluish-green, originating from all corners of the room. The red-headed woman backed over the shards of glass in her high-heeled black boots, unmindful of the damage to the expensive hardwood floor. She was pleading loudly, nearly gibbering in her fear, her empty hands held in front of her, palms first. Above her terrified, hoarse cries, a male voice rose, chanting roughly in Latin. She clapped her hands over her ears, moaning.
The man, tall and thin, advanced on her. In one hand he held a crystal; in the other, a scythe. He menaced her with both, in turns. His hard boot came down on the remains of the lamp, and grimly twisted the glass deeper into the floor. His voice rose, coming to a climax in the spell-and the light in the room exploded around her in iridescent blinding white. The last words tumbled from his lips and the light vanished, plunging the room into darkness. She bolted, desperate, into the shadows, sick to her stomach with the fear of the hunted. The power-her power-was gone as surely as if it never existed, into the fabric of the universe. She fumbled through the blackness, pursued by the sound of those hollow, echoing footsteps.
The guns? No help…not against him. Every pistol and bullet that had ever passed through her hands wouldn't be a bee sting to this one. Only one weapon could even possibly have a hope against that horrible scythe of his. She had one chance…which was a hell of a lot more than most people got.
She half-stumbled into her bedroom, reeling away from the sound of her own broken breathing and the echo of those footsteps, coming from everywhere at once. The woman made a desperate dive and scrambled over next to her dresser, pawing behind it, her hand finally closed on the cool, wire- wrapped hilt of a long, lean sword. Panting, reeling, her mind misted with terror, she brought the sword up in desperation to hear it ring like a bell when it met the blade of the scythe. The tall blond man's eyes glowed in the darkness.
His hand slipped inside his long jacket, dropping the crystal into his breast pocket. He backed slowly back through her bedroom door, weaving the blade of the scythe mockingly. She came forward and swung again. Her power over the sword had left with all the rest…it no longer floated in her hand…it now had true weight instead of handling like a feather. It was unwieldy in her hands and twisted uneasily in her grip. He flicked the scythe at her, more proficient than he had any right to be. She raised the sword to block, her wrists and arms tiring. The pale stranger flicked the blade at her gut, ripping her blouse and drawing a warm horizontal line of blood across her belly.
The hope in her heart faded. The terror grew.
The man tired of the game quickly. It was time to finish this. As she swung again, he stepped into her blow and slammed the butt of the scythe viciously into her hand. There was the sharp snap of bones as her wrist broke. The sword clattered to the floor. She followed it, landing on her knees, sobbing in pain.
He raised the scythe over her and she cowered beneath his tall form, nursing her wrist with her other hand. She raised wet and hopeless eyes to look up into his. "Why?" she begged in a broken whisper. "Why are you killing me?"
His teeth shone in the darkness as he clenched them, and parted his lips in a horrific grin. "Anise," he said quietly, and brought down the scythe.
She watched it fall like the wrath of God…and then saw it no more.
The roar of the train filled the subway station as it rattled through, stirring an underground breeze, whipping at the clothes of those waiting for a spot in the cars, making the trash scattered here and there on the concrete rise up and dance at their feet. Far back from the waiting group sat an old woman on a bench, her huge black purse beside her, a newspaper open in her hands. She read it sedately as the doors to the train whooshed open and the commuters filed in. After a moment, the warning bell dinged in the subway train and the doors slid shut again. The train rolled away from the station and began to pick up speed as it vanished into the darkness of its tunnel. The old woman was left suddenly alone in the sickly light of the subway.
She turned her eyes back to the headlines before her.
A hand clapped suddenly on her shoulder. "Spare some change, ma'am?" said the low, rough voice in her left ear. Her right hand reached unobtrusively for the black purse.
"Not today, sonny," she replied in frail, quavering tones. Her fingers twisted open the closure of her purse and reached inside.
"I think so today, granny," he affirmed as he tightened his grip-and then heard the click of a gun being cocked in his ear. The woman twisted in his grasp to half crouch over the bench, the muzzle of the gun never wavering from him. "Now, if you're a very nice little boy," she continued in that falsetto voice, "perhaps no one will be-"
A chain snapped out from behind one of the concrete pillars beside her and wrapped itself around the gun, yanking it from her hand. A man emerged, untangling her pistol from the steel chain and training it on her. Another goon materialized from the shadows behind her. All three began to converge on her.
"Big guy?" she says in a much younger voice, suddenly smiling easily. "A little help?" As she tilts her head upward to say this, the dim light in the tunnel reveals her wrinkles for lines of makeup, skillfully applied.
The young men are so intrigued by this astounding change that they don't see what she was calling until he landed behind the leader with a thud. They turned as one, and saw behind them something out of their nightmares.
A large purple skinned monster unfolded itself, flexing its wings in the close corners of the subway tunnel. "Tonight," he said sternly, in a deep voice that filled the underground area, "is not a good night to be a bad guy." His eyes glowed fiercely and as he stepped into the light he was revealed for what he was--the leader of the Manhattan clan of gargoyles, Goliath.
The three thugs step backwards, unable to help themselves. Elisa, under her makeup and her old lady's dress, just grined. One of the ruffians, the one with the chain, jabbed a finger at Goliath. "Yo, man…that's one o' those things I've seen on TV, man!" he said to the others. "He's one o' them...them…gargoyles!"
The leader drew a gun from inside a stained and dirty leather jacket. "Yeah," he said, and cocked it, pointing it straight at that wide chest. "An' I heard they ain't bulletproof."
A booming voice, this one raspier but still echoing through the tunnels, replied from behind them all: "No…but we are."
Goliath crossed his arms and grinned. A swish came out of the darkness as Elisa and the muggers turned…the sounds of weapons emerging from hiding places in cybernetic arms. The faces of Coldstone and Coldfire--the two mechanically-inhanced members of the Manhattan clan-tower over them. Their wrist weapons were trained on the muggers.
With Coldstone's one remaining eye glowing brightly, he ordered "Drop your weapons." A knife, two guns, and a chain clatter to the cement. Goliath's fist moved like lightning through the half-darkness to slam the leader in the chin. The thug crumpled to the ground and as the other two watched him fall, stunned, they felt two big hands close on the back of their necks and bring their skulls to a forcible meeting.
Goliath dropped the two beside their leader.
"You know," said Elisa after a moment, "it just isn't as much fun as it used to be." She looked up into the faces of the three gargoyles around her. "I'll meet you guys back at Castle Wyvern, just as soon as I finish the paperwork on these creeps." She reached into the purse on the bench and got out two pairs of handcuffs.
Goliath walked over to the edge of the subway tunnel, looked both ways cautiously, then motioned for the other two. As a group they flew to the ceiling of the tunnel and clung there, awaiting the next train. When it came, they dropped silently onto its steel back and rode it through the closeness of the tunnel to where it emerged for a moment into the night air. Goliath unfurled his wings suddenly and allowed the rush of the wind to fill them as he lifted himself into the sky alongside Coldstone and Coldfire. As they mounted the wind together, Goliath looked over at his rookery brother. "Coldstone…you promised that on our return trip this night you would tell me the reason for your return to Manhattan."
"Coldsteel has returned to Manhattan, my brother, looking for a crystal that will give him infinite power."
