[Flashback]

Fifteen-year-old Marie-Ange Colbert had always been a shy girl, growing up in a rural village on the outskirts of Toulouse in the south of France. However, her excitement outweighed her inhibitions on the night she and her school friends gathered at the city’s famous Terre-Cabade cemetery; this was the night, after months of curious study, when she had finally consented to reading everyone’s fortunes in the tarot. It was the first time in her young life when she had been the centre of attention and she planned to enjoy it to the full.

It was past twelve, deep into the witching hour, and the six teenagers were sharing bottles of wine and smoking cigarettes. Huddled against the chill of early autumn, they delighted at the low mist that was drifting in from the canal du midi to daub the crypts and mausoleums with an eerie, moonlit haze, and to blanket the cypress and magnolia trees that separated the aisles. Night birds sang and crickets chirped, and the faint strains of some distant music carried on the air from a nearby tavern. Everything was perfect. But it wasn’t to last.

Marie-Ange could feel the expectation of her audience. Even the lovely Jean-François, with his blond-white hair and delicate eyes and smile, was enraptured. Flushing, Marie-Ange could barely breathe. Her hands trembled as she slowly began to turn over the cards that she had arranged on the floor of the open tomb where they sat, in a circle, the murmur of their conversation now hushed to silence.

“The Chariot,” Marie-Ange said in French, her voice sweet and lilting. “In conjunction with this card, the inverted Lovers, it suggests you must maintain self-control in a situation where another – a loved one – is demanding you make a swift, and therefore reckless decision.”

“So true,” sighed Constance, a willowy blonde with piercing blue eyes for whom the current reading was being conducted. “Marcel would have me remove my underwear in a flash if I wasn’t so insistent we wait.”

“Perhaps, my darling,” the boy beside her mock-growled at her ear, “If you weren’t such a tease, with your little skirts giving me glimpses of said underwear at every opportunity, I wouldn’t be so rampant…”

The others giggled, and Marie-Ange blushed still darker. She had no boyfriend herself, although she was ever hopeful that Jean-François would come to remedy that. If only she were prettier rather than simple and plain; if her eyes were less dark, if her hair was fair, like Constance, rather than a common pine-brown, or if her legs were slender enough that she could wear loose skirts. If only she were as beautiful as Eve, depicted on the Lovers card beneath her fingertips…

There was a sudden spark, like a discharge of electricity, and Marie-Ange snatched back her hand with a cry. The others all recoiled, wrinkling their noses at the strange, sulphurous odour that now pervaded their circle.

“What is it?” Jean-François asked, reaching for Marie-Ange in concern. “What - ”

But it was then that Constance screamed, followed closely by Marcel cursing in alarm, gesturing towards the far edge of the open area where they were gathered. The rest of the group looked, and each reacted in kind. Only Marie-Ange did not immediately scramble to her feet, intent on running. Her eyes wide, she was staring at the Lovers card before her, then back at the apparition of the naked woman who was standing a few metres away, arms outstretched, an apple in the palm of one hand… and a snake curled about the other.

“Give in not to temptation, Marie-Ange,” the phantom hissed, eyes as black as pitch and mouth curled in an impossibly wide grin. “He does not approve. Trust me – there is none more conversant with His petulance than I. You must remain pure – so that we may live through you.”

In the picture on the Lovers card, a naked Adam was staring out into the world, his expression forlorn. Where once Eve had stood alongside him, there was now merely a haze of white, not unlike the mist curling silently in the trees. Marie-Ange sat there a moment more, deserted by her friends whose cries were growing distant, her mind initially refusing to accept the inevitable truth.

But then, when eventually it did… that was when she started to scream.

[Flashback ends]

Marie-Ange Colbert, now twenty-four years of age and more commonly known by the alias Tarot, couldn’t help but think back to that night in the Terre-Cabade as she scurried through another cemetery shrouded in silvering mist, so eerily reminiscent of that situation almost a decade ago. She understood now that her experience had been the first demonstration of her mutant power. The ability to psionically actualise the images printed upon tarot cards stemmed from the presence of a specific gene, one that marked out an individual as homo superior rather than as a regular human. Her life had changed that night, but she had always remained the same shy girl at heart. Dark-haired, diminutive and vulnerably pretty, there was something of the urchin about her, especially in the outfit that she currently wore at the whim of The Grandmaster: a jacket of chestnut velvet, a cream blouse, and a colourful gypsy skirt of patchwork squares stitched with tiny fragments of glass. Her brown hair was swept back from her face and pinned with a clip fashioned in the shape of a pink rose, bestowing upon her an achingly delicate air. She didn’t belong here.

As of no more than a minute ago the cemetery was swarming with fleshless phantasms, writhing and cackling as they lurched forth from the glimmering fog. Tarot was unable to stop herself glancing back over her shoulder as she stumbled on up the steep incline to the church at the top of the hill. Her new companion, the elegant woman in the scarlet cloak who was urging her to keep pace from a few metres ahead, was adamant that these cadavers weren’t real, but Tarot was unconvinced. After all, she herself was able to conjure all manner of entities from thin air – actual manifestations of solid mass rather than simple apparitions – so how could she afford to discount the possibility that these fiends had substance?

“Hurry, girl!” the other woman snapped, gesturing irritably with the crossbow clutched in her fist. “Whoever is responsible for these illusions may well have other, far nastier tricks in store…”

Tarot grimaced, then stared up at the church once more, its glass windows glowing with the colour of blood. She didn’t want to be here, and she wished for no part in this war. It was all she could do not to collapse in a flood of tears. Her companion obviously realised this for in that moment her expression softened and she extended her free hand.

“Come,” she whispered, with no less urgency. Tarot breathed deeply, then reached out, accepting the other woman’s grasp. And then they sprinted on, together.

[Flashback]

Rajnish Kaur was on the verge of making his first cut with the pearl-handled dagger when there came a knock at his apartment door. He froze, heart hammering, his mouth suddenly dry. He waited… but the knock came again, resolute, followed by a familiar voice calling his name. Cursing beneath his breath, Rajnish sheathed the dagger in its scabbard and silently instructed himself to remain calm. His mind worked feverishly; grimacing, he pulled the shower curtain closed to hide what was beyond, then turned on the sink taps so that hot water began to flow into the bowl. Finally he snatched a white robe hanging from a hook on the back of the bathroom door and slid it over his naked body. By the time he was done, the knocking had sounded once more, punctuated by more yelling. Rajnish rushed to the door and disabled the half dozen locks keeping it secured, then opened it a crack.

“Maggie!” he said, breathlessly. “I’m sorry, I… I was in bed. I seem to be suffering from some kind of virus, and - ”

“Give it up, Raj,” sighed the young girl standing out in the corridor. “I know you’ve just got a hangover. Open the blasted door, would you? This stuff is heavy.”

Peering desperately through the crack, Rajnish saw that his visitor was struggling with a hefty brown sack of groceries in the crook of her arm. The girl poked out the toe of her black Doc Martens boot and nudged insistently at the door. “Okay, okay,” Rajnish muttered. “Just hold on while I - ”

“Dammit, Raj!”

The girl finally lost her temper and shouldered the door, sending Rajnish – who was tall but frail – stumbling backwards, gathering his robe helplessly about his waist. The girl stormed in and stalked to the kitchen, where she deposited the groceries on the counter. Her hair was short and dark, and her boyish figure was clad in a leather jacket and combat trousers. Her name was Maguire Beck.

“Maggie, listen…”

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Maggie snapped, wandering back through to the main room of the apartment with her arms crossed and her expression furious. “I’m so sorry you don’t want to see me, all of a sudden. You don’t answer my calls, you haven’t turned up at Quentin’s studio for two days… what else am I supposed to do but come see you?”

Rajnish groaned, running his hands through his long black hair. He was young, nineteen years old, of Indian descent; not handsome in a classic sense, for his features all seemed a little ill-at-ease with one another, but capable of the most disarming smile. Just not right now. Now, he looked positively terrified – and something else, Maggie couldn’t help but note. Guilty. As if he were culpable for some crime and was about to be… found out?

Maggie flinched as she heard the sound of running water in the bathroom. Then she sniffed the air, suddenly aware of a faint, lingering scent of perfume. Finally she looked down, guided by some feminine instinct, and saw the pair of black stilettos that had been casually discarded over by the sofa, and her breath caught in her throat.

“Oh, God,” she croaked. “There’s someone here, isn’t there? You’ve got another woman here. Jesus, Raj…”

Rajnish bowed his head, saying nothing as Maggie simply stared at him from across the room. When she turned towards the bathroom, he stiffened noticeably. But then, just as he was sure that she was about to investigate, he saw her shoulders slump.

“You bastard,” she sniffed. “You know, it could have been so good. The two of us. Maggie Beck, the amazing Jack O’Lantern… and Rajnish Kaur, the mysterious Conundrum. Twin masters of illusion. Quentin was prepared to go all the way for us, you know? Introduce us to the upper circle – Fisk, Hammerhead, Silvermane, all of them. We would have had it made, Raj. But you just couldn’t keep your damn hormones in check, could you? Christ…”

Maggie trudged to the front door, which remained ajar, then paused just before she made her exit. “Don’t… don’t come back to the studio, okay?” she whispered. “If I don’t kill you, Quentin will. You may think you’re hot stuff with your costume and everything you’ve learned, but he was kicking Spider-Man’s ass while you and I were watching Saturday morning cartoons, remember. He’ll cut you into pieces and scatter you where no-one can find you.”

And then, Maggie left. Rajnish blinked, and a flicker of a smile touched his lips as he sighed with relief. “An ironic choice of words,” he murmured, and then giggled. He crossed to the door, closed it and bolted it, then removed his robe. Nude, he returned to the bathroom where he turned off the taps and withdrew the shower curtain once more. Beyond, in the bathtub, the skinny body of the woman he had abducted from a local hostel less than an hour ago gazed up at him, her blue eyes wide and sightless. Blood had ceased to trickle from the puncture wound in her sternum between her naked breasts where he had used a steel needle to stab her through the heart.

Rajnish retrieved his dagger and grinned. “Well, my darling,” he breathed. “When all’s said and done, that could have ended far more messily, hmm…?”

[Flashback ends]

The man without a face watched the two females – the elder woman in the scarlet robes, and the younger girl in the jacket and gypsy skirt with the rose in her hair – move away in the direction of the church, and he sighed. He had been rather proud of conjuring an army of undead from thin air, and was disappointed his efforts had reaped such scant reward.

The mechanics of illusion, when stripped bare, were remarkably straightforward, of course, even without the aid of holographic projection. In this instance, the dispersal of hallucinogenic chemicals via a special instrument not unlike a flute, from a vantage point high in the branches of the gnarled oak at the heart of the cemetery, stimulated certain areas of the brain to experience images and sensations that did not actually exist. The broadcast of hypnotic suggestion, whispered into a microphone in the illusionist’s mask and transmitted on a high-level frequency, then moulded a victim’s imagination to the extent that they would see exactly what the illusionist wanted them to see – in this case, animated cadavers. A mist-enshrouded cemetery should have made a wonderful breeding ground for nightmares, and the man in the tree had expected his victims to be rendered paralysed with fear… but not so.

The girl had certainly been on the verge of being consumed by her own dread, but not so the woman in the cloak. Obviously she had experienced far worse horrors in her life than zombies courtesy of such movies as Night Of The Living Dead. Still, that in itself presented certain possibilities. The man felt a quiver of cruel anticipation as he mused on what that could be – and how he could exploit it.

When the two women had retreated to a discreet distance, the curious fellow leapt down from the tree, landing with a grunt. He wore a dark brown tunic and a crimson cape, fastened at the throat by a green jewel. He also wore a crimson turban, with another green jewel upon the crown – and beneath this, where his face should have been, there was instead a bizarre mask comprised of a network of interlocking block-shapes, not unlike a jigsaw puzzle, the outer surface of each block coloured a featureless gold.

Identity confirmed, came the sudden whir of a drone, darting down from above. Designation: Conundrum. Probability of overall victory: 1.2 per cent.

The man named Conundrum glanced up – and, immediately, the blocks of his mask detached with a hiss of steam, then began to move with astonishing speed. They stabbed in and out, revolved, moved up and down and left and right, and changed places with one another, slotting sharply into areas vacated by other blocks… until, after just a few seconds, each shape clicked back into place with another hiss. This time, however, the blocks depicted the features of a true face – eyes, nose, mouth, down to the wrinkles of ochre-hued skin – not painted or carved, but actual features, somehow imprinted into the surface of the mask as if pressing through from beneath. The eyes blinked and the mouth curled into a smile.

“At your service, my spherical friend,” Conundrum rasped, his voice the skitter of insect legs. “Tell me, shining one… what do your kind fear? I’m sure I could guess.”

The drone retreated swiftly, and the man with the impossible face barked with laughter, gathering his cloak about his shoulders. Then, he turned, and began to scurry towards the church in the wake of the two women with whom he had now become transfixed…

…under the watchful gaze of yet another player in the game.

A pair of dark eyes narrowed sharply in the slits of a black mask, and a gloved hand worked a glinting shuriken between fingers and knuckles, back and forth, without pause. Leonard Lester, alias Bullseye, couldn’t help but smile at this turn of events.

“Three for one, eh?” he breathed. “What a riot. I’ve always been partial to a nice little bloodbath…”

Black Mamba travelled north at a steady gait, almost a sprint, leaving the sprawl of the forestland behind her and heading for the jagged landscape of dark Abbey ruins up ahead. She was trying not to think about what had happened back at the waterfall – the murder of her companion-by-circumstance, Slyde, who had saved her miserable life twice, the last occasion at the cost of his own. She was also striving to ignore the clamouring voice in her head, with its declarations of hunger and lust for death. She was concentrating on one thing, and one thing only.

Bullseye. His presence, somewhere before her, was shining like a beacon, drawing her on. The persistent thought of him was like a mindless itch that, for the moment, she couldn’t scratch. But only for the moment. This would change when she finally caught up with him – an event that wasn’t too far distant now, considering that his location had remained relatively static since she had set out on his trail. Wherever he was, something had evidently captured his attention. And that was fine by her.

Mamba grimaced as she ran, her eyes gleaming like sequins – unaware that, just as Bullseye himself was scrutinising the movements of his own prospective prey, so she was also being watched…

Maggie Beck, Jack O’ Lantern, banked to her right with an instinctive flex of her hips as she soared upon her Disc Glider along the south-western perimeter of the Abbey ruins where the crumbling edifices of moss-soaked stone mingled obscurely with the edge of the crystalline quadrant. Her eyes narrowed behind both the shell of her helmet and also the illusion of the flaming pumpkin head that was cast about it. Down below, a stunning woman with midnight black hair and a body to die for, sheathed in gleaming black leather, was navigating the ruins with fierce determination. Jack pursed her lips.

“Now then,” she murmured. “Where are you going in such a hurry and a scurry, babe alert?”

She angled her Glider behind a tower of stone to provide cover then gained elevation to allow her to gaze out across the general area. When she saw the church on the hill on the horizon, with its blazing windows and surrounding cemetery shrouded in eerie, luminescent mist, she blanched.

“Ech. Hammer House of Horror and then some. I wonder what’s so important that - ”

Jack never got a chance to finish her sentence, or her train of thought. Because, at that moment, she heard a sound from below – and when she looked down she saw a figure grinning up at her, arms outstretched as if to embrace her. However, the missile clenched in this gaudily clad man’s right hand was enough to suggest that the only thing on his mind was not comfort… but violence.

“Hey there,” said the villain named Boomerang, in his distinctive Australian drawl. “Guess this is just the day for unexpected reunions, right mate…?”

The interior of the church was a triumph of Gothic splendour; spacious, with high, pointed arches and multiple apses, shrines fronted with carved wooden statues, tapestries lining the stone walls, and tiled mosaics upon the floor and the ceiling, bright with Lapis Lazuli. The pews and pulpits were fashioned from burnished oak, as was the communion rail, and at the head of the sanctum there was a magnificent raised altar with an ornate reredos beyond. It was beautiful. But it was also immediately sinister, for none of it was in any way authentic.

Each of the main side walls of the edifice were lined with a half dozen towering windows, before which stood rows of ivory candles upon plinths, all lit. The scent of burning wax and incense was heady, but not enough to disguise the absence of any genuine warmth and familiarity the two women who now entered might otherwise have felt. Tarot gazed upon the candles with a sense of wonder, then shivered, huddled in her jacket.

“Soulless,” her red-cloaked companion murmured, gazing about with an expression of contempt. “A temple to God, perfect in design with not a single stone out of place… but God has never deigned this aberration with His presence.”

At that moment, there was a whirr of machinery overhead, followed by a drone emerging from the shadows, its polished casing flaring bright with reflected candlelight. Identity confirmed, it bleeped. Designation: Stained Glass Scarlet. Probability of overall victory: 0.2 per cent.

Both women stared up briefly at the tentacled orb, so out of place in this environment. Their expressions were apprehensive.

“Are you Catholic, girl?” Scarlet asked, quietly.

“Would it make a difference?” Tarot replied, in English, but with a delicate French accent.

“To what?”

“To whether or not you plan to kill me.”

Scarlet turned to stare at her companion, her eyes dark in the shadow of her hood. “You think I saved you out there so I could kill you myself?”

Tarot ran a shaking hand through her hair, her fingertips brushing against her rose clip. “I don’t know,” she whispered, miserably. “I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know you. But isn’t that what it comes down to? We’ve been put here to slaughter one another…”

“By God?”

Tarot scowled. “I am Catholic, Madame,” she said, angrily. “I have walked among men and women with astonishing powers; I myself possess an ability most could not believe, nor which I truly understand. But I can say with hand on heart I have never met God. And the man who plucked us from our homes and cast us here, wherever we might be, he is not God either. However powerful, however impossible, he is just a man.”

Scarlet smiled thinly, and nodded. “I would agree,” she murmured. “I, personally, am a vassal of God; I do His work. This is not it. I will not kill you, child – even if you were to raise a hand against me. I shall not participate in this game of false messiahs…”

[Flashback]

“O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy;
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.”

The dark-haired woman carefully closed the leather-bound book in her lap then leaned forward in her chair and sheathed the volume back on the shelf between the Selected Poems of Walt Whitman and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde. She smiled slightly as she lingered, trailing a soft fingertip over the gold embossed lettering on the book’s spine. She enjoyed most of the romantic poets, but adored William Blake most of all. He was invariably direct, sacrificing flamboyance for axe-blade lucidity. He spoke to her as no living man ever had or ever could.

The study was dark, lit by a single candle that guttered in the winter breeze from an open window. There was a smell of wax and incense upon the air, and a crucifix upon the wall, bestowing upon the room a churchly air. The woman wore a rosary about her throat, nestling in the folded neckline of her blouse. The blouse was red. Scarlet. Aptly enough. The woman closed her eyes in brief prayer, then stood from her chair and crossed the study to a roll-top writing desk. She opened a drawer and removed the revolver that lay inside. The metal was cold. She loaded six bullets.

“O Rose,” she breathed, her dark eyes misting with tears. “Thou art sick. O Rose, thou art sick. O Rose, thou art… thou…”

She cradled the gun to her breast, and wept freely.

And then, Scarlet Fasinera left her study and went to find her son, Joseph, a criminal and a drug addict at such a young age, a testament to her failures as a mother and a child of God. And, guided by the words of Blake, she shot the wretched boy to death before he might in turn kill another, and thereafter she prayed for both their souls.

[Flashback ends]

For a moment, all was calm. Scarlet Fasinera – Stained Glass Scarlet, that’s what the drone had called her – regarded her younger companion with a cold tenderness, absently stroking the neck of her crossbow along the palm of her hand as one might mime playing a fiddle. Tarot glanced about nervously, wondering what she might do now and whether she could trust this strange, hooded woman who seemed determined to take her beneath her wing. The candle flames flickered, the shadows soughed, and the sense of anticipation crested.

And then, without warning, the eye of the storm had passed and the tempest re-ignited with violence anew; suddenly, the church was rent by an almighty explosion of glass and fire, and all Hell broke loose in this alien sanctuary.

Tarot screamed and threw herself to the floor, whilst Scarlet whirled, one hand raised to protect her face, the other clutching her crossbow to her breast. Across the sanctum, two of the stained glass windows had been all but obliterated, leaving behind a bare grid of steel struts. Softly glowing mist was now seeping through, in tendrils not unlike searching fingers… and there was something more. Cast bright in the candlelight, a half-dozen flying creatures had entered the church, scrawny fiends somewhere between man and giant bat, with bulging eyes and jaws upon spindle bodies, borne aloft on wide, leathery wings. Demons. Screeching, slathering demons.

Trembling, Scarlet instinctively aimed her bow and loosed a bolt, but the imp that was her intended target evaded her attack with ease, wheeling clear and exhaling an unholy chitter of laughter. Beside the woman in the red cloak, Tarot scrambled back to her feet, her silver tin and the card deck contained within clenched in her fist. She flourished the first card that came to hand – Strength – and, with a crackle of psionic energy taking form, so the impossible came to be. A manifestation of pure, coagulated power, an enormous lion with a golden mane flowing back over its powerful shoulders and haunches materialised by its mistress’s side, growling and pawing the mosaic floor underfoot.

“Destroy them!” Tarot commanded. “All of them!” The lion snarled, then turned its face towards her. Its eyes were a whorl of indigo and violet, pure magical essence, lit with an unmistakable intelligence.

“Destroy what?” the beast breathed, in a surreal approximation of a human voice that bore the cadence of a French accent.

Tarot blinked. “The demons!” she shrieked.

The lion cocked its head, and snarled again. Scarlet glanced down at the fantastical creature, her brow furrowed, then lowered her weapon. “More illusions,” she remarked to Tarot. “Your conjuring may have shape and substance, my young friend, but these wretches circling above us only have appearance. They’re no more real than the animated corpses outside…”

Tarot glanced up at the demons – two dozen now, wheeling overhead, flapping and hissing and screaming like bile vomited from the depths of Hell. “But the windows - ”

“We see what we see, and the mind stitches the fragments together. A simple, well-aimed rock would suffice to shatter glass.”

Tarot shook her head in wonderment, then glanced down at the lion. She held out the Strength card, which currently depicted a bare-chested warrior wrestling with blank space where the lion had once been. “Return,” she commanded. The lion grumbled in its chest, then lowered its head. It shimmered… then vanished, returning to the card it had vacated in a snaking crackle of blue smoke. At that moment, the two women heard a breathless cry and the sound of hurried footsteps, and they turned to see a pretty girl with short, dark hair and a boyish figure stumbling towards them from the direction of the main doors through which they themselves had entered the church.

“Help me!” the girl wailed. “He’s outside! He’s controlling them! He - ”

The girl then glanced up, saw the profusion of demons above, and screamed. Scarlet sprinted forward, gathering the stranger in her arms just as she was about to stumble and fall. “Don’t look!” she snapped. “Don’t look! They aren’t real.”

The girl’s expression clouded with confusion. She was about to speak again, but Scarlet raised a hand in a gesture of silence.

“What’s your name?”

The girl trembled. “Maggie,” she answered, quietly. “Maggie Beck.”

“This man you speak of… what can you tell me about him?”

Maggie bit her lower lip. “He wears a cloak, dark red, not as bright as yours,” she murmured. “And… and some kind of turban. With a jewel. But it’s his face that’s the worst thing. It… it moves. Like some kind of clockwork puzzle. It - ”

“Don’t worry,” came the abrupt sound of Tarot’s voice. “I think we can see for ourselves.”

Scarlet looked up, as did the girl she was attempting to comfort. Standing a few feet away there was the fellow that Maggie had described, his face currently clicking and fizzing as the blocks of his mask commenced to switching places, warping his features into a hideous abomination. A face like a puzzle. A Conundrum.

Tarot hissed, then fanned her deck. She plucked a new card – Death – and passed her hand over the picture. A second later, sparkling energy coalesced into the form of a towering figure in a night-black cloak and cowl, carrying a gleaming scythe. In the shadow of the figure’s hood there was a polished skull, grinning widely, with a spark of violet light flickering deep in its otherwise vacant eye sockets.

“Protect us!” Tarot instructed.

The girl, Maggie, looked on with wide eyes. “Is that real?” she asked, her voice quavering. “I mean… is it a physical thing, not just an illusion?”

“It seems so,” Scarlet replied, slotting a new bolt into her crossbow and training it on Conundrum.

Maggie breathed deeply. “Right then,” she whispered. “Well, that’s what I was needing to know…”

Scarlet fired. The bolt speared towards its intended target…

…only to pass straight through the cloaked figure, embedding into the stone wall beyond with a dull crack. Conundrum – or, rather, the illusion of Conundrum – shimmered, and vanished. And the girl named Maggie – or rather, the illusion of the girl named Maggie – flickered, with a smile and a wink, and reverted to her – his – true form.

“The art of the magician,” Conundrum rasped, his puzzle-block mask revolving and then splitting with a vicious grin. “Sleight-of-hand. Always keep your audience guessing.”

And with that, he thrust upwards with the pearl-handled dagger veiled in his fist that the illusion he had cast upon himself had helped to conceal… and the blade penetrated the folds of Stained Glass Scarlet’s cloak, and the black bodice she wore beneath, and then her flesh between the curve of her breasts, and finally her heart. Scarlet’s eyes shot wide, and she grunted. Then, she convulsed, staggering backwards, blood spilling from her chest and pooling in the corners of her mouth.

Tarot screamed. “No! No!”

Conundrum whirled towards her, giggling manically. “You’ll be next, sweet peach!” he howled. “Just as soon as I relieve you of those magic cards of yours. My apologies for pulling the wool over your eyes by disguising myself as an ex-girlfriend of mine, but I needed to know exactly what I was dealing with…”

He swept out a hand, then, and the air was immediately filled with a cloud of sparkling silver – some kind of glitter gas, expelled from a tiny aperture in the palm of his glove. Tarot fell back, choking, her cards tumbling from her hand. Conundrum hissed in triumph, darting forward, ducking beneath the sweep of Death’s scythe as it immediately curved towards him. He rolled, kicking out at Death’s legs and feeling the soles of his boots connect against something solid. Death stumbled, but didn’t fall. Conundrum cursed and began gathering the dropped cards, managing to collect almost a third of them before having to scamper clear of the scythe once more. Metal rang against the mosaic floor, echoing about the eaves.

Tarot was on her knees, still coughing, and her eyes streaming as she attempted to fight off the effects of her enemy’s gas. Death stalked forward, skull bright in the darkness of its cowl. Conundrum jumped to his feet, the blocks of his mask whirring and revolving… then locking in place to show a ghoulish smile of delight. He held up a card, face upturned. It was the Death card, currently empty.

“What was the magic word again, dearie?” he breathed. “I believe it was… Return.”

There was a pause. Death cocked its head, eyes twinkling. Then, it lifted its scythe. Conundrum’s smile vanished.

“Return!” he barked. “I heard you! I heard you say it to the lion! Return!”

“It’s not a parlour trick, you idiot,” Tarot gasped, struggling to her feet, her eyes red and raw. “I’m not like you.”

“What?”

The girl glared at the cloaked man, her expression hateful. “You, monsieur, are a trickster. You cast your illusions like a circus charlatan, and you think I am the same. But I’m not. I don’t rely on magic cards. I am the magic. And I don’t need to be touching the cards to conjure the forces I have always been able to see within.”

Tarot thrust out both hands then, and unleashed her mutant energies; her power to psionically assemble and reshape natural particles into physical forms, in accordance with predetermined images. Suddenly, Conundrum was aware of the air crackling and warping on either side – and when he turned, frantically, on the spot, he found himself staring into the nightmarish visage of what might have been an angel if not for the burning eyes and the cruel smile, and clawed hands brandishing the scales of justice.

“I am the representation of Judgement,” the apparition breathed, with a voice like the chiming of bells. “And you have been found wanting…”

The angel fixed Conundrum with its unholy stare, and the villain found himself frozen. He heard the sound of shuffling footsteps closing in behind him and his blood ran cold with dread, but there was nothing he could do; he heard the whistle of steel, and the revolving blocks of his mask began to twitch and snap at frenetic speed, desperate to release a scream. But it was far too late.

The blade of Death’s scythe sliced through Conundrum’s neck with the barest whisper of separating flesh and bone, and a mist of blood coloured the air. The villain’s head spun upwards, rotating, the jewel in his turban sparkling, the blocks of his mask still quivering… and then fell, landing on the tiled floor with a wet clump before rolling away, leaving a crimson trail in its wake.

“An eye for an eye,” the angel of Judgement sighed, with a twisted smile.

Conundrum’s headless body collapsed in upon itself, gouting blood from the cleanly severed stump of his throat. Tarot stepped forward and retrieved her scattered cards without a word, then stood, her eyes haunted. Judgement and Death both turned to gaze at her expectantly. One after another she held up their two cards and whispered, “Return.” In each case, the manifestation evaporated with a vague hiss.

Tarot looked down at the blood-soaked floor where Conundrum’s corpse was twitching in its death throes, then gazed across at where Stained Glass Scarlet lay, gasping, wide-eyed, scrabbling at her leaking stab-wound. Stifling a sob she moved hesitantly to the other woman’s side, then fell to one knee. The red-haired woman would be dead soon, of that there was no mistake. Her eyes stared sightlessly up towards the ceiling and blood was dribbling slowly from her mouth and the puncture to her heart, but there was a certain clarity to her expression even in her final breaths. Through her pain there was a visible sense of… contentment?

“I’m… sorry,” the French girl whispered. “I will pray for your soul, Madame.”

Stained Glass Scarlet smiled, and blinked in affirmation. There was no fear. It was as if she was prepared for this. As if she… wanted it?

Tarot reached forward to lay the back of her hand against the other woman’s cheek…

…then froze as she caught sight of movement from the corner of her eye. She slowly turned her head to see a figure standing a few feet away, delineated by the light of the candles. It was a man, clad entirely in black, save for a design of concentric white circles upon the forehead of his mask. The man was smiling, He was holding a card between the first two fingers of his right hand. One of Tarot’s cards. He flipped it to show her the picture.

“The Devil,” he said, gently. “I once read that he couldn’t set foot inside a church without bursting into flame. I guess I’m here to disprove that.”

Standing clear of Scarlet, Tarot started to flourish her deck, eyes narrowed as she concentrated her psionic energies, but it was already too late. The man flicked his wrist, sharply, a seemingly innocuous gesture… but then, a split second later, the card skimmed across Tarot’s throat like a scalpel, directed with the utmost precision. Tarot gagged, her eyes shooting wide. She gurgled. She fell backwards, the pink rose slipping from her hair as her cards fell from her hands. She glanced down and saw that the front of her velvet jacket and blouse were already soaked dark with blood. Her fingers pressed weakly at her severed jugular…

…and then, she fell backwards against Scarlet’s body, exhaling one final, gurgling gasp. And the two women died together.

The man in black wandered across to the pair of corpses, splayed one upon the other in the shape of a scarlet cross. He stepped in their blood without conscience, nudging them with the toe of his boot. He grimaced as he bent down and flicked a lock of hair from Tarot’s eyes. It was a shame he’d had to despatch her so swiftly – she was a pretty sort, and she could have been a lot of fun. But the difference between a professional such as himself and an amateur freak like Conundrum was that he wasn’t compelled to kill with a flourish even when his adversary was obviously dangerous. Because of this, Conundrum was dead – but he, Bullseye, was very much alive.

The assassin allowed himself a smile as he heard a whirr from overhead, glancing up to see a drone approaching.

Fatalities confirmed, it bleeped. Deceased: Conundrum. Deceased: Tarot. Deceased: Stained Glass Scarlet. Survival confirmed. Designation: Bullseye. New probability of overall victory: 11.2 per cent.

Bullseye tipped an imaginary hat, then began scooping up tarot cards from his immediate vicinity, pausing only to wipe them clean of their previous owner’s blood on her gypsy skirt. “Thank you, thank you,” he murmured. “Autographs after the main event. Still, I can’t help but feel like a fraud, you know? I only took care of one of these three, after all. And, to be brutally frank, I hadn’t heard of a single one of them before today. Am I really supposed to celebrate the culling of my contemporaries when they’d struggle to scrape a D-list rating? Hmm? Please tell me there’s at least one other player out there to offer me some kind of challenge…”

The drone whirred, but remained silent.

It was up to the woman who had just arrived upon the scene and who was now standing in the doorway of the church to provide a reply.

“If you’re looking to step up a grade,” Black Mamba declared, quietly, “I’ll be happy to oblige.”

Bullseye turned, scowling… but then, as he recognised his fellow combatant, he slowly began to smile.

“Well, hey there, sex kitten,” he remarked. “I’m thinking you and me have got some unfinished business, right?”

Black Mamba’s eyes flashed dark. “Absolutely,” she breathed. “And, trust me – it’s going to be a pleasure…”

“Well now, mate,” said Boomerang, twirling one of his signature missiles between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. “See, what with you being so preoccupied with watching that sexy snake chickaree down below, I could’ve knocked you off without you even realising I was creeping up on you. But I couldn’t do that without satisfying my curiosity. Thing is, I’m a sucker for life’s little coincidences, and this one’s a corker…”

Jack O’ Lantern stared silently at the man who was now facing her as they both hovered in mid-air, him propelled by jets in the soles of his boots and her balancing her weight perfectly on her Disc Glider, shrouded in an illusory cloud of glowing mist.

Boomerang grinned. “Here’s what’s got me tickled,” he said. “Just a short while ago I had cause to be reminiscing with an old cobber of mine, back from the days we were part of a group called the Sinister Syndicate, right? See, we were hired to take down a pair of legs named Silver Sable – and the bloke who was paying us the cash was none other than Jason Macendale, an ex-merc with ideas above his station who liked to bomb around in a costume calling himself… well, I’m hoping you know what name Macendale went under. Considering he’s supposed to be long dead and all, and here’s you filling his pointy little boots. But, as we all know, we never say die in our profession, right? So, colour me nosy. Just before I blow you to pieces, what say you take off that helmet of yours so I can see if you are Macendale or just some pretender, eh?”

Jack didn’t move, or speak. Boomerang’s grip on his projectile tightened. For a moment, nothing happened. And then…

“Actually,” said Jack, “I think I’d prefer to keep my secrets, thank you very much.”

And with that, she jammed both heels down upon the Glider, causing it to rear like a frightened horse and to snap forward, straight into Boomerang’s gut. Somewhat astonished to hear his foe speak with a woman’s voice – and also not expecting Jack to act offensively, considering that the Macendale version had been an unmitigated coward – the villain in the claret and blue costume succumbed to an instant’s hesitation and failed to execute the evasive manoeuvre he had been intending should his enemy decide to try and escape. Thus, when the Glider slammed into him and sent him flying he dropped his boomerang, leaving him unarmed, off-balance, and helpless.

“You know what they say about curiosity,” Jack declared, snatching a golden pumpkin from her belt. “Oh, and just for the record…? This pretender’s pointy little boots are about to kick your ass!”

“Speak!” demanded En Dwi Gast. “What manner of entity are you that dares invade my bastion?”

The Elder addressed the gathering darkness before him with blazing eyes, one hand outstretched imperiously, as if he would take the shadows by the scruff and banish them from his presence at his whim. The sifting black, as formless as smoke but undeniably sentient, merely sighed with something that might have been faint laughter. The Grandmaster’s expression twisted with anger, and his extended hand curled into a fist.

“So be it,” he snarled. “An obvious oversight on my part, perhaps, to believe that I could conjure such a fascinating spectacle as the war that rages below without acquiring an uninvited audience. But my machinations are private. Whatever you are, troll, your existence displeases me. And thus you shall be despatched from this place…”

The Grandmaster’s eyes narrowed to crimson slits, and suddenly the energies of his own hall warped about him, thickening and glinting with tiny slivers of steel. The darkness convulsed as if stung, recoiled…

…but then coalesced once more, refusing to be dispersed. It pulsed, the breathless sigh at the crux of it persisting. The entire hall trembled, and something like a skipping heartbeat echoed through the vast chamber. The Grandmaster blinked.

And, as the assault upon it faltered, the shadows moaned with undisguised delight.

HUNGRY, a disembodied voice hissed. HUNGRY.

And En Dwi Gast gasped in recognition…

To Be Continued...

Significant Issues

Important events referred to in this issue occured in the following Marvel titles:

Stained Glass Scarlet's story is told in Moon Knight (Vol. 1) # 14