SATANA pulled Fenn out of the Zarathos all-you-can-eat because the Triumvirate needed him, and Zarathos was too thick to consider the ramifications of sucking up the human’s soul. Soulless lost motivation, big time, their higher functions ruined; it cut their intelligence by a good half. Without his soul, Fenn would stop caring about getting back at Mephisto and his handy technical skills would be lost.
She popped them back to Fenn’s house and was about to go back to the church—in Florida, of all places—when Fenn insisted that she wait and ran off to grab some big bomb thing. Satana was not feeling the appreciation she was due for shlepping His Royal Darkness off to fill up on souls or saving Fenn from destruction, and she resented the time lost. All the more so when they got back to the church and Zarathos was already gone. The greasy bastard had ditched them once more, presumably heading off to Transia to throw himself at the time lock again.
Fenn had her wait again, surrounded by milling soulless in the doomed church. A bunch of them had been trampled and she killed the suffering ones, annoyed by their obnoxious moaning, while Fenn set up his bomb and retrieved his gamma shield. It took about forever for him to get the timer set—he wanted it to explode just after they left so that Zarathos’s mass feeding would go undetected. He was worried about the Midnight Suns, and Satana couldn’t say she blamed him. With Zarathos ‘leading’ the Triumvirate, the meddling super-friends had an easy target.
As if I needed confirmation, she thought, as she and Fenn arrived in Transia just in time to watch a portal to Limbo slam closed in Zarathos’s screaming face.
The arch-demon raged in a great circle, pulling knives out of his body and throwing them, the fine blades whizzing through the air. The black tar of his blood stained his bodysuit in a dozen places.
“Your Highness!” Fenn shouted, ducking. Satana shushed him, stepped in front of him before Zarathos’s rage turned to the only available outlets.
Dammit. She had to cool him out before he murdered their team.
She bowed deeply, aware that her cleavage had worked miracles many times in the past. “Dark Lord, let me heal you.”
Zarathos shrieked and stamped his feet. “That witch, that little witch! I’ll impale her on that staff! They cut me! They’ll die for this. I will grind them to meat and bone. I will destroy them!”
“They cheated and tricked you,” Satana soothed, moving in closer. “The Midnight Suns are vexing but you will crush them. When you gain the Varkath Star, you will torture them for eternity, burn them, feed on their agony. Here, let me heal your wounds. You were one against many and they cheated …”
Zarathos inflated his chest and let her touch him, muttering nasty curses all the while, a few of them viscerally revolting. Satana turned up her calming pheromones and mentally recited a spell that sent topical anesthetic to the tips of her fingers. She couldn’t heal anything, but the cuts were already closing thanks to his feast, and he wouldn’t know the difference. She was careful not to let him grab her. By the time she stepped away, he was back to his regular angry self, and Fenn finally dared to speak.
“We only have to wait for the vault to open, Your Highness, and keep behind one of my shields until it does. We can visit other places with more souls, and—”
Zarathos disappeared, dropping into the shaft of the vault’s chamber.
“Come on,” Satana snapped, and grabbed Fenn’s arm. Elder Gods, she deserved a medal, what she put up with.
They joined Zarathos in the chamber. He blasted the ceiling with Hellfire, the chamber lit up by a smokeless sheet of furious yellow-white flame that crawled across the rocks overhead.
Zarathos stepped to the vault. He put his giant hands across the top and tilted his head back, measuring what was there. It was the first time Satana had seen him stop to think or assess before immediately going all alpha, and she heartily approved. The Midnight Suns weren’t a joke. They’d ducked real damage at every turn and somehow put a serious dent in a time lock. Taking the Varkath Star from the boys on her team wasn’t the challenge for Satana; keeping the Suns from stealing it was.
Fenn was poking around in the rocks. Satana focused her attention on the seal. There was definitely a lot less of it, but the whole thing was still warded to hide, and she had no idea how the Suns’ witches had managed to set the clock forward without traveling in time. Human magic was weird, mostly weak, but they could do a few things that demons couldn’t. Reworking an intention from its roots was one of them.
“The realms touching this one take a breath to exhale darker air,” Zarathos said. “The seal remains intact until they breathe again.”
“Twenty-nine hours, Dark Lord,” Fenn said, restating what they had already told him. Fenn’s need for vengeance was a driving force like Satana couldn’t imagine, the way he kissed up to Zarathos. The mortal had to know by now that the big Z was pretty much a walking liability.
“Where are the Midnight Suns?” Zarathos said. “I will smite them now. They won’t live to challenge me for the Star.”
Fenn cleared his throat. “I have searched for them, my lord, but I believe they hide in a dimensional pocket outside of Earth’s realm. I think it’s close, though.”
That narrows it down. Fenn maybe didn’t entirely grasp the concept of dimensions, or how they interacted. Most humans struggled with the concept, along with timeline awareness. Close was a measure of distance that didn’t apply.
“So, if we can’t get to them, we should maybe think about making it hard for them to get to the vault,” Satana said, almost asking it as a question.
“The old Blood witch locked the ground,” Zarathos rumbled. Satana had noticed, but Fenn looked surprised.
“Locked it how? Um, Your Highness?”
Satana answered. “Natural environments have intention. It’s not strong magic, but they resist sudden change. If you’ve got enough power, you can reinforce their physical stability.”
“I will kill her,” Zarathos said.
“Yes, my lord,” Satana said. “You are wise to think of how to stop them from reaching the vault. Fenn’s bombs can be used—”
Fenn nodded eagerly. “We can mine this chamber. I have prototypes that—”
“—and there’s nothing stopping us from setting a few traps of our own,” Satana continued. “We both have friends who would delight in tearing apart self-proclaimed defenders of Earth.”
“All of my friends are dead,” Zarathos said. “They were slaughtered by Mephisto.”
Satana bowed her head, hiding her clenched jaw. It was like working with a toddler that you weren’t allowed to beat. “He will pay when you have the Varkath Star, my lord. I only meant beings of chaos in dimensions we can reach.”
“I will call upon Nightmare’s children from the Dream Dimension,” Zarathos said. “The beast-warriors of Brimstone! The Reapers of the Elysian Fields!”
Satana nodded and smiled, screaming inwardly at his choices. Messing with the Dream Dimension was asking for trouble. Nightmare was called that for a reason. Collective-unconscious-type entities were too much like real Elder Gods for her taste; they had agendas that no one could fathom and were frankly upsetting to be around. Brimstone was chock-full of stupid warlord thugs who’d kill their own families to get to an amulet like the Varkath Star. And the Reapers worked for Hades—they didn’t just galivant around doing their own thing. No wonder Zarathos didn’t have any friends—he was terrible at picking them.
“Sumerian fire-demons,” Satana said, pointing at Zarathos as though he’d suggested it. “They’re unstoppable on Earth and always looking for something to burn. Or the hellhounds of Yama’s dimension—they’re as big as horses and easy to control. You are clever to consider which allies would best serve your ultimate goal without wanting the amulet for themselves.”
Zarathos was nodding, impressed with himself, hands still pressed to the obstinate vault. “I will choose them as an artist chooses his medium, a craftsman his tools. We will stop the Suns from reaching this vessel, so that the Triumvirate only is here when it reveals its treasure.”
“The look on Mephisto’s face, when we force his attendance,” Fenn said, his eyes gleaming. “I will read the spell while you don the Varkath Star, master. He will know that the Triumvirate are his undoing.”
Finally, all rowing in the same direction. Satana turned and surveyed the big chamber with an eye to design, considering the pit overhead, the lay of the rocky hills around them. She could ward the area. It wouldn’t hold, but it would force the Suns to come in from a different direction…
She visualized what they could do and where, organizing the possibilities, thinking of the gauntlet that two demonic powerhouses could create with the help of a tech wizard. She had servants to help them, and they could make a lot more when Zarathos fed again.
And we’ve barely got a full day! Satana was excited. This was a thousand times better than unveiling a new color scheme or fashion trend. Zarathos was strong and getting stronger, Fenn was already cackling and muttering to himself, and she had a thousand brilliant ideas sizzling away, ready to be culled for the brightest and best.
This is why the Star belongs to me. She was at the top of her game, reaching for the brass ring with a couple of self-important fools clutching her ankles. The Midnight Suns wanted to snatch her prize away, but the ring’s metal was already in reach, shining and cool and aching for Satana to claim it.
* * *
CARETAKER had worked with Stephen Strange since he’d become the Sorcerer Supreme, as she’d worked with the Ancient One before him. The young man lacked the humility of his predecessor but was much better organized and, as protector of Earth’s magical defenses, had done a fine job of preparing for the celestial alignment. For the last decade he’d been strengthening wards and meeting with various dimensional beings to strike up peace treaties, researching methods to lessen the alignment’s effects, training young adepts to develop their skills. Nico had been at Strange’s school when Caretaker and Agatha had invited her to join the Midnight Suns. It had been many years since they’d actually met in person, which she preferred. She respected Stephen but he simply talked too much, which she was far too old to put up with.
Caretaker lay on a training mat in the forge chamber, arms relaxed at her sides, her eyes closed. The Sorcerer Supreme’s physical body was at the Sanctum Sanctorum, but he was traveling along the astral plane, most of him far from home. She could disrupt him—she certainly had reason—but a physical conversation would lack the nuance of an astral one. She needed him to understand what was at stake, immediately, and be able to reflect on her impressions of the Triumvirate’s strength. Talking was inaccurate.
Caretaker set her thoughts aside and breathed from her center, then rose from her physical form. She floated through the Abbey’s roof, gaining speed, and arrowed into the clouds, finally grasping the mists of the astral plane, soft and shining, a rippling dimension of consciousness. Caretaker considered the Sorcerer Supreme’s essence—bright, sharp, masculine, a kind of dry and studious flavor, ever curious. She sensed him at a vast distance, through many layers of matter and space. His signature was like a candle’s light from across a great dark field.
Caretaker went to him, speeding through the plane’s mists, and arrived at his side in seconds. As she’d expected, he was deep in concentration. Her image was of his physical body floating in black space, perfectly still, the Cloak of Levitation attending him in a slow waving motion. Next to him, a plume of deep green smoke roiled and spun, keeping a roughly pine-tree shape. The silver at his temples had broadened since she’d last seen him, but otherwise he looked as he always did—neatly groomed, his expression intense even in stillness.
She waited. Finding Strange was easy, but knowing when to break into his concentration was more complex. He was communing with the top sorcerer of a dimension with an unpronounceable name that existed in alignment with Dormammu’s realm. Caretaker couldn’t hear them, and they weren’t aware of her presence; alerting them might be a breach of etiquette for the alien sorcerer, and she wouldn’t interrupt a negotiation that might be important.
Time passed, but Caretaker’s thread back to her body marked it in minutes rather than hours. The smoke of the celestial tree billowed within its borders, and Strange maintained his perfect stillness.
Robbie is awake by now. The Suns were working to find the Triumvirate, but watching Zarathos’s spell eat through her best shield had changed her estimations. The degradation of magic was already farther along than she had believed, still half a year from the alignment. The Varkath Star was too valuable to risk without alerting Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme.
Strange’s companion disappeared abruptly, and Caretaker let herself be known.
Sara. His attention was tightly focused, analytical.
She didn’t allow herself to be annoyed, only acknowledged him in turn, and explained as concisely as she could, feeding him her assessment as she showed him the tapestry of her awareness. Soulless and gamma shields, leading to Satana Hellstrom. The Triumvirate. The Varkath Star. The concealed vault, and Zarathos, and the human machine-maker. The unspelling, and the attacks. She didn’t need to tell him about the conditions on Earth as the alignment drew closer; he was fully aware.
When she’d finished, she could feel his consideration.
And? His expectation for what she was asking surprised her.
And the Varkath Star. She projected the value of such an amulet, and the strength of the shield spell that had failed.
Current conditions will hold another month. Midnight Suns seem capable. The Avengers can assist. If you need help, speak with Captain America.
Caretaker pursed her lips. She hadn’t come for advice or a referral, she’d come to alert him to what was happening, and had expected…
What had she expected? That he would send in the cavalry, she supposed, or offer to attend the vault’s opening, releasing the Suns from responsibility. And that he would grasp how vital the Varkath Star was to their cause and would share her worry about the deterioration of magic’s constancy, and what that was going to mean for the Midnight Suns in the days ahead.
He waited for more from her, attentive, but she could feel his slight impatience, too. He had others to meet, and she realized that she had what she’d come for. The Sorcerer Supreme understood the situation and expected her to handle it.
Caretaker thanked him for his time and withdrew promptly, following her silver thread back through the mist, back to the Abbey. She settled into the weight of her body and opened her eyes, sighing. She stayed where she was for a moment, assessing how much time had passed. Little more than an hour, but the Midnight Suns were working on a timer now and every minute counted. They had to find the Triumvirate and stop them from getting to Transia, if they could, and they’d all need to rest and be ready for the vault’s opening either way.
She had doubts. Since she’d released them to fight they’d left themselves open to attack, underestimated their enemy, acted recklessly… but they had also been resourceful, quick.
The mistakes don’t matter anymore, Agatha said.
Mistakes always matter, Caretaker protested. A mistake can mean death!
And they are as inevitable as death. Fighters change course and recover, as the Suns have. As they will. You regained your purpose. Hold to it now. Stand with them, invest them with the confidence they need to prevail.
I miss you so, Caretaker thought, and felt her grief try to rise, putting a stone in her throat, but Agatha had withdrawn. She wasn’t even real, and she was still Caretaker’s best counsel.
Another minute had passed. Caretaker stamped on her feelings and stood up. The Suns were in the war room, waiting.
* * *
MAGIK stood at the mirror table with Blade and Nico, searching New York City for patterns in psychic movement, dead spaces in the light as before. Robbie studied their evolving image, working his way through a box of protein bars. He’d already made two trips to the kitchen. Magik was relieved to see him back to himself.
They’d followed a dozen false leads and Magik watched the changing Eye with growing dissatisfaction. Zarathos and Satana were nowhere to be seen. She should have paid closer attention to the shield box’s energies when she’d had the chance. Its magic had been obscure, understated, hidden by the gamma radiation… yet enlaced with it, and hiding the radiation in turn. The effect was a null, strong enough to cover demonic signatures and soulless beneath its effect. If Magik had better studied the machine, she might be able to find one herself, rather than rely on the table.
Caretaker joined them, nodding at Robbie.
“How are you feeling?”
Robbie swallowed. “Fine, thanks to you. I ate an entire pot of spaghetti when I woke up.”
Caretaker smiled, though it didn’t touch her eyes. “I’m glad you’re well.”
She turned to the table, looking into Ereshkigal’s Eye. “Any progress?”
“Not yet,” Blade said. “They may not be in the state anymore. Or they’ve moved somewhere more populated, and we’re just not seeing the draw.”
Caretaker put her hands on the table. “I’ll look for Zarathos.”
Magik was compelled to speak. “He is not where we’re looking, or the shield still hides him. Satana, too.”
Caretaker lifted her hands. “Perhaps we should consider a different approach. All of you have felt the effect of these shields. What can you tell me about them?”
“They’re hybrids,” Blade said. “The radiation blocked me from sensing their magic. The magic hides the radiation. Up close I got a sense of it, but it was unfamiliar.”
“The magic is ancient,” Nico said. “And it’s got kind of a bitter flavor. Like unsweetened licorice.”
“It’s demonic,” Magik agreed. “I didn’t know the energy either. It was simple but potent.”
Robbie shook his head. “Sorry, I got nothing. They shoot green light and hide demons.”
“A few words of making in an ancient tongue, that can hide radiation,” Caretaker said slowly. “Nico, can you recreate the scent?”
Nico took her hands off the table, and the Eye closed. She centered herself and waved her hands, speaking in Latin. A tangy smell occurred in the room, and she frowned, spoke a few more words.
Magik and Blade both nodded as the scent refined, almost a taste. The experience lacked the texture of the real thing, but it was very close: dark, old, secretive.
Caretaker breathed deeply and frowned. “Are you certain?”
“What is it?” Blade asked.
“It’s similar to… There’s a spell in the Darkhold that holds such a flavor. When Hiram Shaw attacked the Abbey in the New World, he carried that page. It’s an intention enhancement.”
Magik’s heart beat faster. Chthon’s Darkhold was cursed. “It did not seem so strong.”
“The radiation is cloaking it,” Blade said.
“We can find it,” Caretaker said. “I can find it.”
She put her hands back to the table and the Eye opened, but instead of lights or city streets, the image was of vapors, in every imaginable color. The sphere was like a bubble filled with a mosaic of smoke.
Caretaker cleared all the light colors from the Eye, then the deeper shades, and changed the view to outline what remained against a field of pale gray—a handful of tiny wisps of dull black. A few were grouped together.
“Energies of Chthon’s enhancement spell currently in use in the area,” Caretaker said. The image changed, a background of busy streets and buildings rising through the gray. The wisps gained context, became places. Homes, two vehicles, a warehouse. The Eye would not look into them but could finally see them. Robbie took out his phone and snapped pictures.
Blade smiled, a tight, small thing. “No more hiding. Those shields just got worthless.”
“The spell will reinforce intention,” Caretaker said. “I wonder that the Triumvirate hasn’t used it against the vault.”
“Or us,” Blade said. “We’re assuming John Doe built the machines. Maybe he didn’t tell Zarathos or Satana how he did it.”
“He can’t have,” Caretaker said. “If either of them had access to a Darkhold page, we would know it by now.”
“Maybe John Doe doesn’t even know,” Robbie said. “Maybe it’s just a copy of the spell. Maybe somebody else helped him.”
“We’ll go now,” Magik said. They needed to wipe out every trace. The Elder God was a disease, an abomination.
Nico pointed at the densest concentration of vapors, an ugly smudge across the Eye on the island of Manhattan that extended east, a very crowded area.
“That’s Laurelton,” Blade said, as the Eye refocused. A tall, narrow house tucked among many.
“This has got to be them, right?” Nico asked. “That’s, like, four or five shields running, at least. Everywhere else just has one.”
They all nodded.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Caretaker said. The table’s image changed to a bird’s-eye view. “Magik will take us to the alley behind the building, here. We will stay in Limbo while Nico freezes the activity inside.”
“Zarathos can break a stasis,” Magik said. She wasn’t sure about Satana Hellstrom. Nico’s blood-magic was powerful, but the succubus had undoubtedly been feeding heavily.
“We will assess the situation from Otherplace,” Caretaker said. “I’ll make a shield to block Zarathos from our position. He may be able to break through again, but we’ll have enough time to retreat, and we will re-evaluate from the safety of Limbo. We’ll do the same for each of these locations until we find them.”
“And what’s the plan when we do?” Nico asked.
“The Midnight Suns will see to it that the Triumvirate doesn’t cause any further trouble,” Caretaker said. “Whatever it takes. We’ll collect the Varkath Star and the other items in the vault at the appointed hour.”
“And we’ll destroy the machines,” Magik said.
“We should preserve one of them to—” Blade began.
Magik interrupted to clarify. “We will destroy them.”
The others looked uncertain, but Caretaker understood—Magik saw it in her eyes. Chthon’s works could not be tolerated to exist in any realm. Whatever might be gained from studying the machines was not worth it; even an indirect line to the Elder God’s will was an existential threat. The tiniest seed of his poison would always take root, a fast-growing, thorny black weed spreading a thousand corrupt offshoots toward the black sun of his evil. Chthon slept but was ever dreaming of ways to return to form, probing at the cracks and crevices of his veil. Words from the Darkhold would draw his notice.
“Magik is right,” Caretaker said. “They’re toxic. Trigger their destruct mechanisms and get them away from us, from people.”
“We should take my ride,” Robbie said. “Lotta trunk space.”
Ghost Rider’s Hell Charger would be useful. There was a portal in its trunk that opened to a desolate wasteland of Hell, the Spirits’ favorite dumping ground. Magik had her own place in Limbo where an explosion would do no harm, but Robbie would also be able to dispose of any soulless they found.
“Not yet,” Caretaker said. “Finding and stopping the Triumvirate is our primary aim. Investigation and clean-up can wait until they’re out of the picture. Any questions?”
There were none. Caretaker raised her hands and moved them out to the portal dais. In the Abbey’s dimension, Caretaker’s intentions were like her Soulsword, a concentration of her essence that she could manifest into reality. The dimension’s stability was an ongoing testament to Caretaker’s power and resolve.
Magik drew her own sword, armor rippling up across her torso and shoulders. Its weight was a comfort. Magik feared nothing like she feared the Elder Gods. A demon could be defeated, even the most powerful of them. An entity like Chthon could only be held at bay, eternally, and never be allowed to wake. The Elder Gods were chaos incarnate.