“Go on, Chief!” Eun yelled, slamming together the heads of two of the slow-moving mummies. “I’ll be along in a minute!”
Lazarus hesitated only a moment before his faith in Eun won out. He ran up the stairs and glanced out the ruined front door. He saw Sporrenberg and Samantha were pinned down outside and the unconscious form of Pemberley lay in the foyer.
He was about to head upstairs when something caught his eye: a small stack of dynamite hidden against the wall. A small detonator lay on top, the second hand counting down to doomsday. Now he saw the ultimate scheme: lure the members of Assistance Unlimited into the building and then allow the explosives to end their lives. If that was true, then the other villains would be planning their escapes at this moment.
Sure enough, the gunfire from above ceased and hurried footsteps took their place.
“Everyone! Get out! Now!” Constance yelled.
The veiled woman skidded to a stop when she saw Lazarus. She turned, intending to head back up, but found the path now blocked by Morgan and Abby.
“The game’s over,” Lazarus said quietly. “We’ve just captured the Queen.”
It had been an easy task for Abby to disarm the explosives. In fact, she’d simply transformed the material into something inert and harmless. With the threat of an explosion now removed, the members of Assistance Unlimited were able to turn over their enemies to the authorities at their leisure. Lazarus assured both Klee and Constance that he would see to it that their conditions were cured, or at the very least eased.
Only Femi remained at 6196 Robeson Avenue, a permanent guest of Lazarus Gray’s, at least until they could figure out what to do with her. A simple execution seemed obviously ineffectual, in light of her continuing resurrections. The Egyptian was provided with a small room on the top level of the building, where Lazarus normally had the entire floor to himself. Her room was barred with all the mystical force that Abby could bring to bear and Lazarus felt confident that they would not have to worry about her escaping anytime soon.
Forty-eight hours later and Melvin Pemberley was placed back into the very same cell from which he had escaped. The foul physician had sat on his bunk long after lights out, staring into the darkness, his heart hammering in his chest. He had gone through surgery to remove the slugs that Morgan had fired into him and he ached terribly. But that wasn’t the reason for his insomnia. He was expecting a visitor.
An awful, terrible visitor.
Then a voice finally spoke up from his right, its owner invisible in the stygian darkness of the prison. “Well, that didn’t take long, did it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re back in jail so soon. I figured you’d make the most out of your freedom, Melvin. Especially given how much you gave up to get it.”
Pemberley swallowed hard, his mouth suddenly very dry. “What did I give up?”
“You told me I could have anything and everything, remember?”
“Yes… So what is it that you want?”
The voice laughed softly before answering. “I gave it a lot of thought and in the end I decided that the only thing you had worth taking was the only thing you ever really valued.”
Pemberley’s voice cracked. “Just tell me, damn you!”
“No, Melvin. Damn you.”
Pemberley felt a gloved hand touch his scalp, massaging it. He shivered but made no move to defend himself.
“I’m going to take that mind of yours,” the voice hissed. “Your intellect. I’m going to take it and put it to good use.”
Pemberley’s eyes opened wide but he never made a sound. He couldn’t, even if had wanted to. All the knowledge, all the vocabulary, was flooding out of his mind, like someone had removed the cork. His jaw fell slack, a bit of saliva dripping from his bottom lip. His handsome face would never be attractive again, not with that vacuous expression upon it.
He was an Idiot now, better suited for the sanitarium than a prison.
The gloved hand left his scalp and its owner stood up, allowing himself to become briefly illuminated in the cell. He wore a long red cloak over broad shoulders and a hood hid his features, though curved horns atop his skull gave a clear indication that he was not quite human. He looked through the bars of the cell, his eyes falling upon the staring eyes of the prisoner across the hall.
The man licked his lips in terror, whispering the name, “Satan,” under his breath.
The hooded figure grinned. “Oh, come now, give me some credit. Given all the information I just absorbed, I think a better non de guerre would be Doctor Satan.”[6]
The mocking laughter carried through the prison and even the brain-dead form of Melvin Pemberley shivered in its wake.
EIDOLON
Chapter I
Slayer of Satan
The jungle’s heat was oppressive. The sunlight that streamed in through the twisted trees was an odd color, filtered through the verdant canopy. The air was so thick that moving through it was like passing through some invisible curtain of humidity.
The two men who moved along the narrow trail were as close as brothers. In the lead was a tall man with blond hair, blue eyes and a horribly scarred face. Walther Lunt could have been handsome if not for the horribly misshaped flesh on the right side of his face, which was the result of a nasty encounter with a vial of acid.
Behind him came Richard Winthrop. He was an athletically built young man in his mid-twenties. A graduate of Yale University, Winthrop had an intelligent look to his face and mismatched eyes — one was a dull brown in color, the other a sparking emerald. Several days’ worth of beard and tiny droplets of sweat marred what would have otherwise been a handsome face.
“How much farther?” Winthrop asked, adjusting the backpack that he was wearing.
“Anxious, are we?”
“I’m ready to grab the rock and head home,” Winthrop responded.
“If I had a beauty like Miya waiting for me, I’d probably feel the same way. It should be just up ahead.”
Winthrop nodded. Though he was younger than Lunt, the German seemed unperturbed by either the humid conditions or the long trek that had brought them here. Of course, in the three years since they’d first met, Winthrop had come to consider Lunt’s placid nature par for the course. The German had a furious temper when roused but he always seemed too lofty to be brought down by mere physical exertion.
“Are you certain that you can handle this, Richard?”
Winthrop glanced at his friend, noting the challenging tone to the words. “If I need your help, I’ll give a yell, believe me.”
Lunt nodded, smiling softly. He pressed forward, as if sensing that their destination lay within reach.
They had come here to find The Temple of Pain, where cultists had practiced human sacrifice for centuries. It was rumored that the devil himself would join them for drug-fueled orgies… until the night that a warrior, stoked by alcohol and bloodlust, stabbed Satan with a sacred knife. The warrior had carved out the devil’s heart and it had become the most unholy of trophies, housed in the very center of the temple.
The Illuminati, the shadowy organization to whom both Winthrop and Lunt belonged, wanted The Devil’s Heart. It was hoped that they could keep it from the hands of evil men, thus protecting the world.
6
This fiendish villain debuted in