The Darkest Hours

Chapter 10

I CLICKED THE PRINT BUTTON and my printer wheezed to life—though at this point, I doubted the dissertation on magical systems of power that it was currently reproducing would be helpful except maybe in an analytical retrospective, long after the fact. I muttered under my breath, and tried the next batch of Web sites, looking for more information, as I had been since Mary Jane went to bed.

There was a sudden, heavenly aroma, and I looked down to find a cup of hot coffee sitting next to my keyboard.

"Morning," Mary Jane said, leaning over to kiss my head. "I thought you weren't going to stay up all night."

"Marry me," I said, and picked up the coffee.

She was wearing my T-shirt, and I could not, offhand, think of anyone who made it look better. "We'll see," she said playfully. "I'm baking cookies for Mister Liebowitz down the hall for his birthday, so I might get a better offer."

"I always knew you'd leave me for an older man." I sipped the coffee and sighed. Then I glowered at the stack of useless information by the printer.

"How'd it go?" she asked.

I made a growling sound and sipped more coffee.

"Peter," she said, "I know that in your head, you just said something that conveyed actual information. But when it got to your mouth, it grew fur, beat its chest, and started howling at the moon."

"That's right," I said, as if reminded. "You're a girl."

That got me a rather sly look over the shoulder. Doubtless, it was the fresh, steaming coffee that made my face feel warm.

"I take it your research didn't go well?" she said, walking into the kitchen.

"It's this magical crap," I said, waving a hand at the computer. I got up from my chair, grabbed my coffee, and followed her. "It's such hogwash."

"Oh?"

"Yes. It's like we're reverting to the Dark Ages here. Which you're not actually supposed to say anymore, because it's not like it was a global dark age, and to talk about it like the whole world was in a dark age is Eurocentrically biased." I sat at the kitchen table. "And that's pretty much what I learned."

"You're kidding," she said.

"No. Eurocentrically biased. It's actually a phrase."

"You're funny." She opened the refrigerator door. "Seriously, nothing useful? Not even in the Wikipedia?"

"Zip. I mean, there's all kinds of magical creatures on the net, God knows. But how do you tell the difference between something that's pure make-believe, something that's been mistakenly identified as something magical, something that's part of somebody's religious mythos which may or may not have a basis in life, and something that's real?" I shook my head. "The only thing I found that was even close to these Ancients turned out to be an excerpt from a Dungeons and Dragons manual. Though I did run across a couple of things that led me to some interesting thoughts."

Mary Jane continued on, making breakfast and listening. I wasn't sure how she did that. Heck, I had to turn off the television or radio to be able to focus on a phone call. "Like what?" she asked.

"Well. These Ancients might have superpowers and such, but they still have the same demands as any other predator. They have to eat, right? And they're thousands and thousands of years old."

She nodded, then frowned. "But I thought that the super-powered types only started showing up kind of recently. I mean, fighting Nazis in World War Two, that kind of thing."

I shrugged. "Maybe. But maybe not, too. I mean, most of the super-powered folks who have shown up are mutants. I've heard some theories that it was nuclear weapons testing that triggered an explosion—"

"So to speak," Mary Jane injected.

"—in the mutant population, but that doesn't make much sense to me. I mean, the planet gets more solar radiation in a day than every nuke that's ever gone off. It doesn't make sense that a fractional increase due to nuclear weapons tests would trigger the emergence of superpowers."

"Worked for the Hulk," she pointed out.

"Special case," I said. "But I think that maybe what we're seeing—the rise in the mutant population—might be as much about the total population rising as it is about a sudden evolutionary change. We've got about six billion people on the planet right now. Two thousand years ago, the estimate is that there might have been three hundred million. If the occurrence of powered mutants is just a matter of genetic mathematics, maybe it just seems like there's a lot more mutants running around these days. I mean, they do tend to be kind of eye-catching."

She was making omelets. She assembled them as quickly and precisely as if her hands were being run by someone else's head while she carried on the conversation with me. "And you think that explains how these things ate before? By feeding on the occasional mutant with some kind of totemistic power?"

"Potentially," I said. "Even a reduced population might be able to sustain the Ancients. They only eat once in a while, sort of like a boa constrictor. Felicia thinks the last time Mortia ate was in the forties. Morlun told me that feeding on me would fill him up for a century or more."

"Tastes great," Mary Jane said. "More filling. I agree."

I coughed. "Thank you," I said. "But, ahem, getting our minds out of the gutter, think about it for a minute. How would people have described someone with, say, Wolverine's gifts, back when? He'd have been called a werewolf or a demon or something. Charles Xavier would have been considered a sorcerer or a wizard of some kind. Colossus would have been thought to be some kind of gargoyle or maybe a fairy tale earth-creature, like a troll."

She lifted her eyebrows. "So, you're saying that maybe a lot of folklore and mythology might be based on the emergence of mutants, back when. Like if… say, Paul Bunyan was actually a mutant who could turn into a giant."

See what I mean about brains? My girl ain't slow. "Exactly. Ezekiel told me that the African spider-god Anansi was originally a tribesman who had acquired spiderlike powers. Sort of the original Spider-Man. That he got himself involved with gods and was elevated to godhood."

"Actual gods?" Mary Jane asked, her tone skeptical.

"Hey," I said. "I ate hot dogs with Loki a few months ago. And I saw Thor flying down Wall Street last week."

She laughed. "Good point. You aiming for a promotion?"

"Not if I can help it," I said. "But think about it. Say, for example, something really odd happened and I joined up with the Avengers. All of a sudden, I'm running around with a new crowd, gone from home a lot, hanging around with Thor, all that kind of thing. If it was two thousand years ago, it sure would look like I'd been accepted by beings with incredible powers, whisked off to their world and welcomed into their ranks."

She nodded. Then asked me, "Would that be so odd? For you to join a team like that?"

"Captain America doesn't think I'd be a team player," I told her. "We've talked about it in the past. And there was that whole thing where I wanted to join the Fantastic Four, but when they found out I was looking for a salary they got all skeptical about me."

"You thought the FF

paid?"

Mary Jane asked.

"I was about sixteen," I said. "I thought a lot of stupid things."

She smiled, shook her head, and started dishing up the omelets. "Eat up, Mister Parker. Get some food in you."

I took the plate from her and set it on the table. "Anyway. I didn't make a sterling first impression on the superhero community. And I've had all that bad press, courtesy of the

Bugle.

So there's always been a little distance between me and Cap and most of the other team players."

"It just seems…" She paused, toying with her fork. "You know. If you were part of a team, it might be safer."

"It might," I said. "But on the other hand, the Avengers are pretty upscale when it comes to villainy. They take on alien empires, aggressive nations, superdimensional evil entities, that kind of thing. I mostly do muggers. Guys robbing a grocery. Car thieves. You know—here, New York, with real people. There's no friendly neighborhood Thunder God."

"Did you call them up, at least?" she asked.

"Answering service," I said. "Who knows where they are this week? I left a message on their bulletin board system, but I don't know if they'll get in touch anytime soon since, you know. They mostly don't know who I am." I paused. "The secret identity thing probably hasn't helped endear me to my fellow good guys, thinking about it."

"What about Reed Richards?" she asked.

"Called Mister Fantastic's lab at six A.M.," I said. "He'd been there for an hour already. He said he'd see what he could find out, but he didn't sound optimistic. And he has to take Franklin to the dentist later. He said he'd get word to me by this afternoon, but…"

"But he's a scientist," she said. "Like you. He doesn't like the whole magic thing, either."

"It isn't that he doesn't like it. It's that he likes things to make sense.

Science makes sense. Some of it can be pretty complex, but it makes sense if you know what you're dealing with. It's solid, reliable."

"Predictable?"

'Well," I said. "Yes."

"You don't like things you can't predict," Mary Jane said. "Things you can't control. You don't know the magical stuff, and it doesn't seem to lend itself to being predicted or controlled—so you don't like it."

"So now I'm a control freak?" I asked.

She looked at me for a second. Then she said, "Peter. You've spent your entire adult life fighting crime, protecting people from bad guys of every description and otherwise putting yourself in danger for someone else's sake—while wearing brightly colored tights with a big black spider on the chest. I think it's safe to say you have issues."

"With great power…" I began.

She held up a hand and said, "I agree, God knows. But an abstract principle isn't why you do it. You do it because of what a robber did to Uncle Ben. You could have controlled that if you were there, but you weren't and you didn't. So now you've got to control every bad guy you possibly can. Be there for everyone you possibly can. That's control freaky. Constructively so."

I frowned down at my eggs. "I haven't really thought of it that way before."

"That's right," she said, deadpan. "You're a man."

I glanced up at her and smiled. "I'm glad you remembered."

She blushed a little. She does it much more pret-tily than I do. MJ leaned across our little table and kissed my nose. "Eat your breakfast, tiger."

The door to our little apartment opened, and Felicia stepped in, dressed in a dark gray business suitskirt that showed an intriguing amount of leg. She wore horn-rimmed glasses and had her silver blonde hair pulled back into a bun. "Pete, we're screwed. Hi, MJ."

I was still in my shorts, and MJ hadn't gotten dressed yet, either. I sat there with a bite of omelet halfway to my mouth. "Oh. Uh, Felicia, hey."

Mary Jane gave Felicia a glance and murmured to me, "Was the door unlocked?"

"No." I sighed.

Felicia closed the door behind her and peered out the peephole. "Sorry. I didn't want to stand around in your hallway and get spotted." She looked back at us and gave me an appreciative glance. "Well, hello there."

Mary Jane gave Felicia the very calm look that comes to people's faces only seconds before they load a deer rifle and go looking for a bell tower. She stood up, and I stood up with her, taking her arm firmly. "Uh, Felicia, give us a second to get dressed, okay?"

"You bet," Felicia said. She tilted her head, sniffing. "Mmmm. That omelet smells good. Are you guys going to eat that?"

"Why don't you have mine," Mary Jane said sweetly.

"Come on," I said, and walked Mary Jane out of the room. We got into the bedroom and shut the door.

"Are you sure she isn't evil anymore?" Mary Jane asked.

"Felicia wasn't ever really evil. Just… eviltolerant. And really, really indifferent to property rights."

Mary Jane scowled. "But if she was evil," she said, "you could beat her up and leave her hanging upside down from a streetlight outside the police station. And I would like that."

I tried hard not to laugh and kissed her cheek, then put the uniform on under a gray sweat suit and stuffed my mask into a pocket. Mary Jane went with jeans and a T-shirt, in which she looked genuine and gorgeous.

"She's not that bad," I said as we dressed.

"You know that."

"Maybe," she admitted.

"I think maybe you're having a bad day," I said. "I think that she's mostly a convenient target."

"Of course you'd say that," she snapped. Then she forced herself to stop, the harshness in her voice easing, barely. "Because you're insightful and sensitive. And because you're probably right."

"Yeah," I said. "That's hardly fair to you."

She lifted her hand in a gesture of appeasement. "Peter, I do my best to be rational and reasonable about everything I can. But I think maybe I'm running low on rationality where Felicia is concerned."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because she gets to help you when I can't," Mary Jane said. "Because you used to date her. Because she doesn't respect such banal conventions as marriage and probably wouldn't hesitate to rip off her clothes and make eyes at you, given half an excuse."

"MJ. She wouldn't do that."

"Oh? Then why is she dressed like some kind of corporate prostitute?"

I sat down next to my wife, put my hands on her shoulders, and said, "She wouldn't do that. And it wouldn't matter if she did. I'm with you, Red."

"I know," she said, frustrated. "I know. It's just…"

"It's a tough time, and between the two of us there isn't enough sanity to cover everything."

She sighed. "Exactly."

"No sweat. I've got it covered," I said. "I'll take care of business, release the pressure, Felicia will probably go back to her glamorous life in private security, and everything will be like it usually is— which is good."

She covered one of my hands with hers and said, "It is pretty good, isn't it."

"I always thought so."

She took a deep breath and nodded. "All right. I'll… somehow avoid clawing her eyes out. I can't promise you anything more than that."

"I'll take it," I said. I kissed her again, and we went back into the living room.

Felicia hadn't eaten anyone's omelet. She was, however, giving the fridge an enthusiastic rummaging, setting things haphazardly on the counter by the sink as she did.

Mary Jane paused, and her cheek twitched a couple of times. Then she took a deep breath, clenched her hands into fists, and sat down at the table without launching even a verbal assault. She began eating her omelet in small, precise bites while Felicia continued foraging in the refrigerator.

Felicia eventually decided on the leftover pizza and popped it in the microwave while I sat back down.

"All right," I said to Felicia. "What did you find out about Gothy McGoth and her brothers?"

"That we're in trouble."

"Gosh. Really."

She stuck out her tongue at me. "Mortia is connected, and in a major way. She controls at least half a dozen corporations, two of them Fortune companies. She's visited the White House twice in the last five years and has more money than

Oprah—none of which can be found in documented record or proved in a court of law."

I frowned. "How'd you find out, then?"

"Let's just say that I know some very intelligent and socially awkward men with a certain facility for the electronic transfer of information." She checked the pizza with her fingers, licked a blob of tomato sauce from them, and sent it for another spin cycle in the microwave. "The point is that these people have money, employees, and enormous re-sources. And bad things can happen to people who start sniffing around. Several investigators looking into their business turned up dead in really smooth professional hits. They looked like accidents."

"How do you know they were murders, then?"

"Because the Foreigner said so."

Mary Jane frowned at me. "The Foreigner?"

"Professional assassin," I said quietly. "He killed Ned Leeds. Hired a mutant named Sabretooth to kill Felicia."

Felicia smiled, and it made her eyes twinkle. "He can cook—oh my goodness! And his wine cellar is to die for."

Mary Jane blinked. "You dated him? Before or after he tried to kill you?"

"After, of course," Felicia said with a wicked little smile. "It made things… very interesting."

Mary Jane's fork clicked a bit loudly on her plate for a moment as she cut the omelet into smaller pieces with its edge.

"I'm out of the business," Felicia said, "but we keep in touch. I went skiing with him in South Africa last summer. Even the Foreigner's information on Mortia was very sketchy, but it gave me places to start looking." She took a bite of pizza. "And our best move is to blow town."

"What?" I asked.

"I picked up four plane tickets for London, and from there we can cover our tracks and get elsewhere. I can have new identities set up within the day."

Mary Jane blinked at Felicia and then at me.

I finished my omelet's last bite, swallowed, and set my fork down. "Four?"

"You, me, Aunt May, and MJ," Felicia said. "We have to get all of you out together."

"Why do you say that?"

"This is a no-win, Peter," Felicia said, her tone growing serious. "Without more knowledge, you can't take those three on. And if we start nosing around to get that knowledge, one of their managers is going to notice it and correct the problem."

"And hit men are supposed to be scarier to me than the Ancients?" I asked.

She finished the first piece of pizza with a grimace. "I guess you cooked, eh?"

"Stop trying to dodge the question," I said.

She looked down for a moment, her expression uncertain. Then she glanced at Mary Jane. "The Ancients are rich. One person has already found out about Peter's alter ego by spending a lot of money and using his brain. If they're willing to expend the money and manpower, it's only a matter of time before the Ancients know, too." Then she glanced at me. "And then you won't be the only one in danger."

My stomach felt cold and quivery, and my eyes went to Mary Jane.

Her eyes were wide with fear, too. "Aunt May," she said quietly.

Aunt May was out of town at the moment. Her friend Anna had won two tickets on an Alaskan cruise liner in a contest on the radio, and they were off doing cruise-liner things for the next few days. The brochure had said something about glaciers and whales.

It occurred to me that there really wouldn't be anywhere for Aunt May to run or anyplace to hide, trapped out on a ship like that.

"The people they send won't be obsessive, melodramatic maniacs like your usual crowd, Pete," Felicia continued, her voice calm and very serious. "They'll use strangers, cold men, with years of skill, patience, and no interest whatsoever in anything but concluding their business and taking their money to the bank. They'll find you, stalk you, and kill you, and it won't mean any more to them than balancing their checkbook."

"All the more reason to take care of it right now," I said quietly.

"No," Felicia replied. "All the more reason to run right now. For the moment, the Ancients don't know any more about you than you do about them. If Peter Parker and his family vanish now, you'll be able to hide—to bide your time until we can figure out more about the Ancients or else get some help in taking them down."

"I'm not—," I began.

"Whereas if you wait," Felicia said, running right over me, "if you keep going the way you are, they'll find out who you are, probably within a few days. Then it's too late. Then they'll use their resources to keep track of you and everyone you care about, and you won't have the option of running anymore. You won't be able to get out of sight long enough to come up with a new identity."

Silence fell.

I've been afraid of bad guys before. That wasn't anything new. The people I care about have been put in danger before. That wasn't new, either. But this time was different. This time a choice I had to make would determine whether or not they'd be in danger. If I stood my ground, the Ancients would use them to get me out in the open, and the only way I could keep them absolutely safe was to hide them—or else to get eaten, in which case my loved ones would no longer be of value or interest to the Ancients.

But it would mean vanishing, maybe for a while. It would mean leaving behind a lifetime there, in our town, our home. New York can be dirty and ugly and rude and difficult and dangerous, but it is by thunder my home, and I would not allow anyone to just rip it away.

Bold words. But I wondered if I'd ever be able to look at myself in a mirror again if MJ or Aunt May got hurt because of my stubbornness.

I looked up at Mary Jane, searching for answers.

My wife met my gaze and lifted her chin with her eyes slightly narrowed, a peculiarly pugnacious look on her lovely face.

I felt my lips pull away from my teeth in a fierce grin.

Felicia looked back and forth between us and drew a small packet consisting of airline tickets held in a rubber band from her jacket pocket. She tossed it negligently in the trash can. "Yeah," she sighed. "I was afraid you'd see it like that."