By Ant L. (Team Archivist)
It had been a fortnight since The Balance had returned from their magical mystery tour with the survivors of the Birmingham Incident. They heard tales that the Library was still cleaning its floors after the unexpected ‘invasion’ but all the team could do was smile; sometimes, elitism just needed to get over itself and realize that being an exclusive minority isn’t always the best way to better the world.
Brian Wellingham smirked as he remembered the disgust on the chief librarian’s face when one-thousand lucky-to-be-alive Brummie refugees materialised in his grand hall; then he smiled when he thought of the young man who found his family after fearing them dead for the last five years. That was what being a hero meant to him; having the power and the responsibility to protect those people who could not do so themselves, from the forces that threatened to change the fragile world that they all shared. Of course, for X-Ray, the electro-magnetic Geomancer of the Earth, it had been a calling for some years, since his college years in Stoke-on-Trent, but it was only now, in Wessex, with The Balance, that he felt his true purpose emerging.
As Brian sat there with his two teammates, his wife Stacy, foster-son, Chris, and a few of The Balance support team, he saw in them all the raison d’être for his existence as a Meta. Since joining the team in the wake of Paragon’s resignation he had discovered the existence of Anti-Life, the unknowable force behind the “undead”, an entity that wanted to twist life into something of its own making. Some of the Terminus military forces fell into this category, and so did Vampires. He looked at Stacy, currently fending off some flirtatious compliments from Akira, and immediately recalled the pain he had felt when she had been kidnapped by a cult of the creatures a few months before. He had spent weeks channelling his E-M abilities after that, until he had learned to alter the phase frequency of his energy beams in order to affect “out-of-phase”, or intangible, beings; at least now, with that power within him, he had a chance to kill these things when they became incorporeal.
He looked at Mary, the adorable old lady that was secretly Banshee, merging with an other-dimensional Fae being with analogous powers to the Celtic folk-tale Ban Sidhe. It would never happen, Brian told himself, Mary would not succumb to another’s will, but, if the unthinkable happened, would he be able to put her down with his newly-learned control? Despite his inherent hatred of Anti-Life, was Brian Wellingham the killer the world might need him to be?
Deep down inside himself, he knew the answer.
Strange, then, that the next mission for The Balance turned out to be one that involved more vampires, and the choice to take or save a life…
—
5 November
<<Incoming message for The Balance members designated Akira, Banshee, and X-Ray,>> the Frankie AI relayed to the three of them via their Commdot communicators, <<news reports are indicating the mysterious disappearance of seven blood delivery vans at Westminster Bridge in London. Members of the public are telling the authorities that the trucks simply vanished into thin air. The Metropolitan Police are requesting assistance.>>
The trio responded to the call and made their way to the bridge. They all inspected the structure but determined very quickly that it had not been tampered with – no trap doors, or anything of that nature – and that left a teleporter or magic, neither of which filled X-Ray with joy. Akira performed a postcognitive ritual in which he saw the trucks vanish, but the breakthrough came when Superintendent Cunningham of the Met responded to their enquiry regarding CCTV footage.
Viewing the relevant recording, the team were able to see that a man was present at the scene; he seemed to be waiting for the trucks to arrive and, when they were suitably close to him, he raised his free hand (as one was holding a staff) and moved it in a choreographed pattern – a second later, the trucks vanished. He was joined by a woman and together they walked away as though nothing had happened. Bystanders witnessed the event, though they were smart enough to stay clear of the duo and call the authorities instead. Several other nearby CCTV cameras were accessed, but the duo melted away into the London crowds near the Houses of Parliament. However, Akira and Banshee had seen enough to recognise the pair.
According to Frankie, facial recognition combined with archive material revealed photographs of the same man had existed since the late 1800s’, but there was currently no other identification possible.
“He is a warlock,” said Akira, recognising the mage. From the paused image, steely-cold, violet eyes stared out at them. “That is Adrian Vandaleu, believed to be the progenitor of the Vandaleu clan, and also believed to be over a thousand years old. He is the head of a family renowned for their mystical ability.” According to the genealogies Akira had read the Vandaleu family had intermarried with the Steadmans’ throughout history; Adrian had apparently been alive for several centuries and fathered several generations of his own family. The woman was identified as Lady Amaryst Venda, a more recent addition to the same family.
X-Ray was none-the-wiser, but he rolled his eyes; magic. Again!
The team agreed that the only course of action available to them was to get to the Houses of Parliament – it seemed to be the place that the mage had been heading as he left the bridge, and they had no other clues to work with.
Arriving at New Palace Yard, the square next to the Parliament building, X-Ray started to feel queasy almost immediately. “There’s something not right here,” Brian said, clutching his abdomen, “I don’t feel good. It’s like… Anti-Life is nearby, but…ugh…it’s such a strong feeling…”
The crowd consisted of the usual obvious tourists, nearly all of whom gave The Balance an obligatory glance before steadfastly ignoring them. Only the Japanese contingent made a show of photographing the trio, though they were gracious enough not to pester the team for selfies.
With no obvious cause for X-Ray’s distress in sight, the only other option seemed to be underground. Akira volunteered to send his astral form underground and seconds later, leaving his unconscious body in the care of his teammates, his astral body floated serenely into the earth. Unlike Banshee, whose intangible form still had to breathe, Akira’s astral form was pure psychic energy, with no requirement for air or nourishment. Moments passed, and then he discovered the source of X-Ray’s discomfort; this was bad…
Back in New Palace Yard, Banshee noticed a pair of young women approaching her and X-Ray. One, an archer with sharp features, was armed with a recurve bow and a quiver full of arrows; the other was a boyish figure in a white shirt, armed with a silvered Katana. Curiously, nobody amongst the crowds seemed to notice the two ladies, despite the weapons on view. Was the public so uninterested in such things now that Metas were a common feature of UK life? The thought seemed inconceivable, and yet…
Banshee gestured to X-Ray, who activated his force field when he saw them. They didn’t look like trouble; one wrong move and he would alter the gravitational field around the pair of them, sending them straight up into the stratosphere…if he had to. But they wouldn’t be trouble…
“Leave. Now!” said the archer. Ah, well, so much for that idea. X-Ray lunged for her bow, intending to disarm her quickly, but his body betrayed him and he missed the weapon as his guts cramped. In response she nocked an arrow and loosed it in a heartbeat, cursing silently as it struck the invisible force field and fell to the ground.
Banshee interceded. “You know we can’t do that. We are The Balance. Who are you?”
“We are Night Warriors,” said the archer, “and we have a job to do here. It’s best that you leave us to it.” X-Ray kept his eyes on the swordswoman; it was doubtful that she posed a threat to him or Banshee, but you could never be totally sure with…
“Vampire hunters!” exclaimed X-Ray. His intuition served him well. Other people were approaching through the crowds, one of whom was blind, though she moved nimbly and confidently guided by a young boy, her son apparently.
The archer introduced them all. She was Adriana Verstraeten; the swordswoman was called Ariela Stone, known as Ripper; the new arrivals were a male called Amir Hussein, the blind woman was Despyre and her guide was Joey Summerfield, the bald man was Dex Grimwood, and the last person in the group was Sandra Chiang, collectively known as The Night Warriors.
Ariela continued, “Do you have any idea what you have stumbled into? Have you any idea what lies beneath your feet?”
“Vampires,” announced Akira, back in his body and standing to his feet. “Banshee and I have been here before in eighteen-eighty-eight.”
The Night Warriors paid attention as the young mystic recounted the adventure that he and Banshee had had a couple of years before, with ancestors of the Night Warriors, of which some of these current Warriors were apparently descendants.
Before X-Ray’s time as a member the Balance had aided the Victorian version of the Night Warriors when they had travelled through time back to eighteen-eighty-eight. They discovered that almost one-thousand British soldiers had been turned into vampires after returning home from the first Boer War and later the Sudanese Mahdist War, either through injury or rotation, between the years of eighteen-eighty and eighteen-eighty-eight. To save the day, The Balance had helped to collapse a series of crypts and underground chambers, resulting in the vampire army being crushed and buried alive. Or, at least, buried undead. The chambers extended for a wide area, both underneath Parliament and the square, with other catacombs branching off from the main rooms.
“That’s what I have found beneath us, the entombed bodies of all those vampires. That’s why X-Ray is feeling unwell, they are still there, a thousand vampires, all being fed with the missing blood through some kind of filtration tubing. The blood is seeping into the earth. Vandaleu is feeding them the stolen blood. If they get enough of it, they will be able to revive themselves, dig their way out. They will be unstoppable!”
“And that’s where we come in,” said Ariela, “We have been following Vandaleu’s movements. He and the Inner Circle of the Court of Shadows intend to raise the Vampire army forced into their comatose state by being buried beneath the Houses of Parliament. We intend to stop them, which is why you need to leave.”
Banshee turned on the woman, “What are you planning to do?”
“Blow them up,” replied the archer, “every last one of them. It’s your English Bonfire Night, we intend to put on quite the show.”
“And the public?” enquired X-Ray, “The square, the Houses of Parliament? What about all that?” Ariela looked disdainfully at the geomancer, “This is a war, not a love song. You people just don’t have a clue what’s at stake here. We get the job done, no matter the cost, for the greater good. It’s that simple.”
The Balance looked at each other, knowing the implication of her words.
“Don’t be here when we return. If you are,” she eyed them sternly, “it will go badly for you.”
As one, the Night Warriors turned and walked away. Akira and X-Ray asked some of the nearby tourists if they had seen the group, even pointing them out as they walked into the distance, but none of the humans saw a thing.
“Perception filters of some sort,” muttered X-Ray, secretly wondering whether he could learn to bend light around himself to effectively become invisible. Something to work on, he told himself.
As X-Ray pondered his future practice sessions, Akira and Banshee spoke in hushed tones about their previous adventure here, and as the memories fell into place they led X-Ray away from New Palace Yard and, scant moments later, arrived at the disused former Church of St Mary’s where, previously, The Balance had used to access the crypts below Parliament. Now, though, the way was blocked.
“Dead end,” said Akira, noticing that Brian still looked rather peaky.
“There’s something close, still,” Brian said, “I still feel unwell. I take it these underground crypts and tunnels go a fair way?” He looked at Banshee for the answer, but she was deep in concentration.
Akira cast another spell of post cognitive revealing, and saw an image of Vandaleu and some red-garbed minions working on what seemed like a pumping unit, with crates of blood packs, some metallic suitcases, and a container of a creamy white liquid; the old church had obviously been used as a staging post, but where were they now?
“I have felt a vibration,” said Banshee, coming out of her trance, “I think I can lead us to the source. It may be something that we need to find.”
It didn’t take long. Barely a few minutes later they were certain; a three-storey parking facility on St Peter’s Street. The place was closed off at ground level and the whole facility was empty of vehicles. However, X-Ray’s enhanced visual power noticed a broken padlock and chain on a doorway which, upon closer inspection, led into an old stairway that led down under the car park. They could all feel a slight vibration through the ground now, and the faint sound of a distant mechanical noise.
Banshee volunteered to scout the subterranean area, turning invisible and floating through the tarmac and earth with practiced ease. Thirty feet or so down, she guessed, then she found a tunnel; following the noise along this passageway she reasoned that she was travelling some small distance back towards Parliament, the grounds if not the actual building. She found her quarry without issue – Adrian Vandaleu was there with Lady Amaryst, and half-a-dozen guards in red armour and full face masks.
Returning to the car park, Banshee briefed the others and took them back with her, turning them insubstantial and invisible in order to maintain the element of surprise.
And it worked.
When The Balance materialised in the crypt where Vandaleu was situated they knew what to expect and the positions of everyone involved. To the left of the room, a generator and a pump; next to the pumping machine, the containers for the blood and the strange liquid. Four large lights on tall stands were spread around the chamber, powered by cables running from the generator. The guards were keeping the blood topped up from the stolen transportation crates, and the metallic containers held the source of the creamy fluid – Terminus control bugs!
The mage had somehow discovered how to use the fluid from the bugs’ internal systems to control the waiting vampire army, adding it to the blood that was slowly soaking into the ground. Lady Amaryst was chanting quietly over the plastic vat of creamy fluid, apparently charging it with mystical energy for a reason that remained unknown to the heroes.
X-Ray wasted no time at all, unleashing a low-power gamma beam at the container of blood, shattering it into worthless plastic shards. It galled him to waste that much blood, knowing its usefulness and necessity in the medical profession, but if he could starve the vampires of their immediate food source, it was a sacrifice he knew he had to make.
Events moved quickly from that point; Amaryst was snarling at the intruders, and Vandaleu cast a spell that forced Banshee to become solid, a state she hadn’t intended to assume in the cramped space of the crypt. Amaryst began to chant as Banshee released her signature wail at her companion, bowling Adrian over unceremoniously to the flagstone floor.
Akira’s mind was racing – the revelation of the control bugs could only mean that Vandaleu was looking to control the vampires. He could almost admire the man for the audacity of his plan. Speaking of admiration, he could not help but be impressed with Amaryst’s power as he saw the results of her incantation; a golem was forming before their eyes, an amalgam of concrete and brick, growing in size and mass as it incorporated the flagstones, pillars and cornicing of the crypt’s architecture. Even in its nascent form it lunged at X-Ray, its weight fully behind a strike against the most physically imposing member of the team; the huge grey fist glanced off his force field and X-Ray escaped injury.
Akira watched as Brian fired one of his energy beams at Amaryst, obviously hoping to nullify the golem by taking down its creator. The woman must have had a magical defence in place, as she barely registered the geomancer’s effort. Worse, Akira saw that the golem was still growing – either Amaryst was powering the beast, or her spell was now independent of her control. Now was the time to act.
Akira began to summon his mystical energies, even as he noticed that Vandaleu had disappeared. Where had he gone? He couldn’t have got past them, surely?
The red guards were grabbing wooden staves as Akira wove his power. He watched as the golem, heavy with mass and strength, swung a slow fist at X-Ray, who managed to avoid the punch with deft footwork. Banshee saw that the guards were starting to aim the tips of their staves towards her, and she screamed her anger and venom at them, causing the point man to collapse, clutching his now bleeding ears.
Akira unleashed his bolt at Amaryst and succeeded in crashing her defence shield; she wobbled like a punch-drunk boxer, barely able to stay on her feet.
‘Magic is my arena,’ thought Akira, as he blew on his extended fingers, shaped like a two-digit pistol.
Suddenly, to Akira’s right, X-Ray screamed in agony, his back arching as pain seared through his powerful physique. Akira saw a patch of blackness appear on Brian’s shoulder, spreading rapidly down his back and arm. Instinctively, X-Ray raised his left hand to his right shoulder and unleashed a blast of radiation behind him – Akira heard another scream and a sickening thud. He noticed movement behind him in his peripheral vision, and turned just in time to see Adrian Vandaleu slide three feet down the back wall of the chamber, to lie splayed out and unconscious at its base. Above the mage, the eerie blast-shadow of his body outline was visible in the afterglow of X-Ray’s energy blast, a silhouette of defeat.
Akira could tell that Brian needed a moment to recover his wits, but the golem had other ideas. The ‘BOOM’ of its fists hitting the floor was deafening, and the shockwave filled the air with fragments of broken stone, but The Balance earned their title as all three of them managed to remain upright. Time was pressing; the golem was as tall as the chamber’s roof now, and his massive stone body would soon be unstoppable!
And they still had the Night Warriors to worry about.
Through gritted teeth, Akira summoned a second blast of mystical energy and directed it at Amaryst. She went down in a heap, a spell dying on her lips as she collapsed.
Three of the red guards fired energy beams from their staves, hitting Banshee squarely in the torso. For a second, Akira’s heart was in his mouth, but the beams passed through his old friend and blasted into the back wall, mere feet away from Adrian’s body. She had managed to regain her ghostly state just in time!
The other two red guards grabbed Amaryst’s body and lifted her up between them, with the three that had fired upon Banshee moving to stand between them and The Balance.
Without warning, Akira saw the golem’s head hit the roof of the chamber, its feet a few inches off the floor. Its hulking stone form suddenly rotated ninety-degrees in mid-air before it shot backwards, slamming its bulk into the red guards and Amaryst, narrowly missing the pump as it did so. The young mage turned to see X-Ray’s outstretched arms pointing to the monster, the blackness on his shoulder almost gone. He could see the rage in Brian’s eyes, how much pain he must have been in whilst he forced his mind to control the gravitational fields within the room; he was impressed, and glad he was on the side of the angels.
With all the human elements out of action only the golem remained, clambering to its feet amidst the wreckage. The Balance acted like a well-oiled machine – Banshee screamed at the golem, the sheer impact of her sound waves cracking the stone skin apart, forcing it to take a step back to steady itself; Akira used another mystic blast that smashed into the golem’s torso, ripping its right arm away in a shower of stony debris; X-Ray seemed to glow like the Sun, a laser beam hitting the golem mid-bulk, blowing its lifeless carcass apart with the force of a wrecking ball.
The Balance had won the day, but they couldn’t celebrate their victory just yet.
They disconnected the tubing that Vandaleu and his cronies had – somehow – managed to worm into the earth below Parliament grounds, then quickly discussed a plan to dispose of the trapped vampires.
It took three hours to complete but, by calling in help from several sources, they were able to get the job done. A warehouse was brought out of its stock of garlic paste, and this was added to a few hundred litres of Phosphoric acid. This new mixture was ‘fed’ to the awakening vampires through the seepage system, ensuring their destruction. Gruesome, perhaps, but X-Ray was happy with the outcome. He felt sorry for the soldiers who had lost their lives all those years ago, but he couldn’t undo the past. Those poor men were long gone, and The Balance had stopped an unspeakable evil from being released. It was a win.
It was now dark outside, and the threat of the Night Warriors plans had to be neutralised. Banshee contacted them and told them everything that had happened that afternoon; they took some persuading but eventually, with the threat of the vampire army removed, they agreed to not blow up the Houses of Parliament. That was also a win.
However, as Akira and Banshee suggested leaving the site that evening, X-Ray was taken aback.
“We can’t just leave these people here, though. They need to be locked up at least,” he said, looking at his teammates as though they had lost their minds.
“It wouldn’t do any good,” said Akira, “People like these, mages, wouldn’t stay in prison very long. Nothing can hold them.”
“So we need to interrogate them, then, or give them to the Night Warriors. They might have information that we need to know about. We can’t just let them go!”
Akira could sense the anger rising in Brian’s tone and posture.
“To leave them with the Night Warriors would mean the end of them,” he pointed out.
“Perhaps they deserve it?” It sounded like a question, but Akira couldn’t help but consider it a statement of intent. He had sympathy for the geomancer, knowing about the unease that Brian had to deal with whenever he was around magic or this ‘Anti-Life’ force, but he was a doctor, a renowned surgeon – this talk of killing was against everything that Brian should be feeling.
Akira saw X-Ray’s fists clench.
“Let me see what I can find,” he said quickly, “Maybe there is something in her head that we can use to our advantage?”
A pregnant pause…then X-Ray let out a breath. “Okay, have a go.” It was a compromise, and one that Akira was willing to try. He settled by Amaryst’s unconscious body and tuned in to her thoughts, using the Medallion of the Modrossus, relaying the images that he found at the forefront of her mind.
“Vandaleu and Amaryst…ooh, Lady Amaryst Venda…are part of the Court of Shadow’s Inner Circle, that much we knew. The guards are the Keepers of the Court of Shadows, and they have a simple glamour to prevent others from noticing their unusual appearance when in public. The Court are looking to use stolen control bugs to command their very own army of Metas. I can see an oil rig…not the same one that we went to a while back…I think it’s their base of operations…and there is a connection to Carpathia. Ah! Lady Amaryst was enchanting the liquid, setting up a magical link to the control serum. It would have been a simple, but long-range, remote control mechanism. Clever! However, this operation was not condoned by the Court – this was all Vandaleu’s idea. He simply wanted his own army, copying the Court’s idea for his own benefit.”
Akira emerged from his trance, a smile on his face, “How am I doing?”
X-Ray smirked at him; the strange young man was infuriating at times, but he couldn’t help but like him.
“Now,” Akira continued, “let’s leave them be and get out of here. I’m starving; I haven’t eaten since breakfast…”
Banshee turned to leave and Akira waited for X-Ray, anxious to see him go.
Brian lingered, looking from Amaryst to Vandaleu. These people didn’t deserve the lives they had, didn’t deserve the power, the privilege, when all they showed for it was petty-minded evil.
For crying out loud! They were going to unearth an army of vampires! How could they be allowed to live?
Brian noticed Akira waiting for him, still smiling.
Despite his inherent hatred of Anti-life, was Brian Wellingham the killer the world might need him to be?
Deep down inside himself, he knew the answer. No.
But he would be. When the time was right.
—
The Blood Service drivers reappeared on the pavement of Westminster Bridge twenty-four hours later, +having lost their memory of the last 48 hours. That was also a win.
Superhero Adventures, UK Style 