POWER STAR 103

[Kimberly Murphy-Smith]

POWER STAR
The Imagination Anthology

ISSUE 103
OCTOBER 1996

Jerry Seward and Kimberly Murphy-Smith, Editors
Walter M. Scott III, Graphics Editor
J. Calvin Smith, Manuscript Editor

CONTRIBUTORS:
Mike Allen, D. Lynn Bivens, L.G. Frey, Elizabeth A. Reber,
Priscilla Tweed

Tricks And Treats
V Cross-Reference, By Jerry Seward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
A guide to episodes, novels, comics, and web sites for
one of TV's scariest shows.
"Night People: Night Of The Owl", by L.G. Frey. . . . . . . . 20
Teenage vampire Emmeline Cullens has been swept away by
reporter and would-be-sorcerer Melvin Macklom's spell to
1981 New York City--can she and Melvin get back? The
original adventure continues!
"A Lone Creation", By Elizabeth A. Reber . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Musings on fiction writing in poetic verse.
"The Return Of Zorrothustra", By Mike Allen. . . . . . . . . . 33
Something is wrong with the universe in this original
short story about an astronomer who witnesses something
extraordinary through his telescope.
"The Kingmaker", Conclusion, By D. Lynn Bivens, Kimberly
Murphy-Smith, And Jerry Seward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Fourteen heroes, seven villains...and Number Six? What's
going on here? Find out in the conclusion to this
four-part multimedia crossover!
"Rogue", Conclusion, By D. Lynn Bivens And Gerald James Seward
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
In trying to protect Natalie from vampire enforcers, Nick
Knight just shot one of his fellow cops--can he keep
Natalie safe, explain what happened, and still protect
his secret? The long-awaited conclusion to this Forever
Knight story is here!

Regular Stuff
Credits 'N' Stuff. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2
Who did what kind of art/graphics this issue, plus the
usual disclaimers, addresses, etc.
Musings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
Random thoughts from a rambling editor.
Price List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Our usual advertising plug.
Coming Next Time.... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
...an issue of Thanksgiving. Read all about it.

* * * * * * * *

Scan, p. 3, by S&M Video Productions
Art, p. 34, by Mike Allen
Art, back cover, pp. 23, 25, 29, by L.G. Frey
Art, p. 47, by Priscilla Tweed

POWER STAR is a monthly amateur fanzine devoted to science
fiction, fantasy, and horror in all media and is published by
Kimberly Murphy-Smith and Jerry Seward. Seeking material--fiction
and non-fiction, prose, poetry, and artwork--on all forms of
fantastic media. Comments are welcome. Submission guidelines are
available upon request.
Issues 1-23 are no longer available. Other issues are
available upon request. Shareware copies (ASCII text only),
starting with issue 71, are available on several BBSs worldwide.
BBS SysOps interested in distributing POWER STAR should contact
Kimberly at either the post office or e-mail address below.
Issues and shareware registration cost $5.00 ($8.00 in Canada;
$10.00 in Mexico/South America; $12.50 for European countries;
$15.00 for all other foreign countries) in U.S. funds. Discounts
are available for volume purchases. All issues are shipped at
Fourth Class Book Rate (U.S. orders) or Printed Matter Airmail rate
(overseas orders) unless otherwise requested; there is an extra fee
of $3.00 for faster U.S. shipping. Make check or money order
payable to Jerry Seward and address all orders to 3421 Fulton
Street/Saginaw, Michigan 48601 USA.
Address all other correspondence to Kimberly Murphy-Smith:
Regular mail: 9530 Canterbury Riding/Laurel, Maryland 20723
USA/(301) 604-6824
Primary e-mail/internet submissions: kamu...@ix.netcom.com
America Online Submissions: Kimmurphy
Calvin's address: bi...@ix.netcom.com
Jerry's address: gray_...@juno.com
Walter's address: 71625...@compuserve.com
POWER STAR Home Page:
http://members.aol.com/kimmurphy/private/pshome.html
S&M Video Productions Home Page: http://www.premier.net/~smengrs
(Snailmail information requests, please enclose SASE. E-mail
information requests, please include e-mail address in the body of
request to prevent misrouting of replies.)

Copyright 1996/1997, Jerry Seward/Kimberly Murphy-Smith.
POWER STAR is in no way meant to infringe the rights of holders of
copyrights referred to in this publication. All original stories
and artwork are copyrighted to the authors.

* * * * * * * *

Musings
Commentary By Kimberly Murphy-Smith

Thank you for all your questions and calls wondering what's
going on here. In short, things have been extremely hectic since
our move. There've been boxes that haven't gotten unpacked, so
stuff gets lost. There was my knee injury. Then there was
straining the other knee. Then straining a chest muscle (feels
just like a heart attack, for anyone who's never done it). Then my
wrists acted up and made typing nearly impossible. My workload has
been huge, particularly over at the microelectronics foundry where
I perform the vast majority of my network support duties. And in
the midst of all this, my beloved Baltimore Orioles finally made
the baseball playoffs after 13 years of futility and I got caught
up in the race as the season progressed, then the Washington
Redskins started 7-1 and I got caught up in those games, too, as it
looked like they'd finally turned the rebuilding corner and were
headed for the NFL playoffs.
Suddenly, we're two months behind and approaching three.
There's no real way to apologize for this. I have been
contemplating what to say and how to say it, and there just is no
way except to say I am sorry. I will do my best to get back on
schedule as fast as possible. To that end, you'll notice some
changes starting with this issue. First of all, please help me
welcome Jerry Seward back aboard as a co-editor. I've missed
having Jerry's contributions to the issues, and am happy to see him
again. Welcome, Jerry!
You may also notice there are no more cross-reference and BBS
lists in this issue; both of these came by requests. Look for more
features to replace these in the future. There will also be no
Comm Panel until we are back on schedule; I promise Comm Panel will
return, as we value your feedback on our efforts.
Now, on to the issue!
-- Kimberly

* * * * * * * *

They arrived in fifty mother ships, offering their friendship and
advanced technology to Earth. Skeptical of the Visitors, Mike
Donovan and Juliet Parrish infiltrated their ranks and soon
discovered some startling secrets. The Resistance is all that
stands between us--and the Visitors.

V Cross-Reference
An Episode Guide By Jerry Seward
(Novel/Comic Guide And URL Lists Compiled By Corey Tacker)

PREMISE: In search of food, lizard-like aliens have come to Earth
disguised as humans. Using propaganda techniques, they convince
many Earth citizens to support them, but a small band of resistance
unmasks the aliens and reveals their true purpose, resulting in
widespread war against the Visitors.

Cast of Characters

Mike Donovan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Marc Singer
Dr. Juliet Parrish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Faye Grant
Diana. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Jane Badler
Nathan Bates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lane Smith
Robin Maxwell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Blair Tefkin
Elizabeth Maxwell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jennifer Cooke
Ham Tyler. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael Ironside
Elias Taylor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael Wright
Willie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robert Englund
Kyle Bates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Jeff Yagher
Lydia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .June Chadwick
Howard K. Smith. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Himself
Tawny Schneider. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Herself
Sean Donovan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Nick Katt
Chris. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mickey Jones
Mr. Chiang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Aki Aleong
Charles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Duncan Regehr
Lt. James. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Judson Scott
Martin/Philip. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Frank Ashmore
Marta. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Gela Jacobsen

ABOUT THE SHOW: V, in its initial four and six-hour presentations
in May of 1983 and 1984, generated extraordinary popular appeal.
It was NBC's highest rated program both years. As series
production began, executive producers Daniel H. Blatt and Robert
Singer promised to continue the intriguing drama and allegory
established in the two miniseries, in which evil, reptilian
creatures dominate Earth as a fascist regime. But without the
involvement of Kenneth Johnson, who wrote, produced, and directed
the original 1983 miniseries and left V after network executives
basically told him they wanted a show that would appeal more to
young children, the weekly series soon deteriorated into an outer
space A-Team. V was cancelled after nineteen episodes. A twentieth
episode, "The Attack," was written but not filmed.
In late 1989, Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski was
hired by Warner Bros. Television to write a V revival. What
Straczynski came up with was "Rebirth," the script for a four-hour
TV movie and pilot for a new, syndicated series that would have
been called V: The Next Chapter. As "Rebirth" unfolds, nearly ten
years have passed and much has changed. Humans have lost the war.
The Los Angeles Resistance is no more. Mike Donovan is a tortured
prisoner of war on the Visitor homeworld. Friendly alien Willie
was executed as a traitor. The Starchild Elizabeth is also dead.
Juliet Parrish escaped to Australia under a new identity. As for
the evil Diana, she killed Lydia and is now commanding a Mother
Ship in a different sector. Only one character from the original
series makes a guest appearance in "Rebirth" and it's Ham Tyler,
who joins a new Resistance group in Chicago. The real reason for
the Visitor invasion is revealed: They want to use Earth as a base
of operations for a larger war against their pacifistic enemies,
who are members of the same race, the ones Julie and Elias radioed
a message to in the original V. Ham is killed in the end, taking
a Mother Ship full of Visitors and a powerful weapon called the
Tachyon Globe along with him. Warner ultimately decided against
doing the new series, deeming it too expensive.

THE MINI-SERIES

V (4-hour telecast in May 1983)
Seemingly friendly aliens arrive on Earth with the secret intention
of world domination.

The Final Battle (6-hour telecast in May 1984)
The American rebels, led by Julie Parrish, a scientist, and Mike
Donovan, a freelance TV news cameraman, attempt to reveal the
aliens' true nature; Robin Maxwell gives birth to twins fathered by
one of the Visitors.
THE EPISODES

"Liberation Day" (10/26/84)
Peace has ensued for a year. Amid Liberation Day celebrations,
Diana, who is to stand trial for crimes against humanity, is
kidnapped by corporate magnate Nathan Bates, who wants to bargain
for the aliens' technology. Meanwhile, the half-alien girl,
Elizabeth, undergoes a metamorphosis. (Backstory note: Much of
the novel The Pursuit Of Diana by Allen Wold takes place during the
unrecorded year. S.P. Somtow's V novel The Alien Swordmaster also
takes place during this time.)

"Dreadnaught" (11/9/84)
With the Visitors engaged in a global battle with the humans, Diana
sends for the ultimate space weapon and the freedom fighters plot
to steal the Los Angeles Mother Ship; Elizabeth emerges from her
cocoon as a teenager with strange potential. (Trivia buffs: Stock
footage from the 1953 classic War Of The Worlds is used to show the
Visitors' attack on Los Angeles.)

"Breakout" (5/24/85)
Donovan and Ham are captured by the aliens and placed in a
torturous work camp where Kyle and Robin help them plan an escape.
(From the "Age Of Innocence" department: Broadcast of this episode
was held off because the network considered it too violent for
younger viewers.)

"The Deception" (11/9/84)
Diana hopes to obtain rebel secrets by using holographic
projections to convince the captured Donovan that the war is over.
Meanwhile, Nathan Bates' rebellious son Kyle rescues Robin and
makes an alliance with the rebels. (Cameo watchers take note:
This was the first episode to feature a broadcast from the Freedom
Network, with Howard K. Smith's update on the war.)

"The Sanction" (11/16/84)
Donovan rescues his son from the aliens and is stalked by the
deadly leader of the alien youth corps, who wants his prize pupil
returned. Meanwhile, the Starchild is reunited with her mother.

"The Dissident" (12/14/84)
Donovan and Ham kidnap a pacifist alien scientist named Jacob who
designed a force field that Diana has placed around Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, angered by Diana's incompetence, Lydia steals a shuttle
and attempts to reach the Leader.

"Visitor's Choice" (11/23/84)
Nathan Bates imposes a curfew in the open city in an attempt to
curb Resistance activity. Meanwhile, Donovan and Ham make plans to
hit a Visitors' conference that will be attended by high-ranking
officers in charge of "food" preparation.

"The Overlord" (11/30/84)
A woman pleads with the Resistance to liberate her town from a
despot who's collaborating with the Visitors by overworking the
townsfolk to provide cobalt for their weapons. Meanwhile, Bates
suspects Julie is feeding information to the rebels.

"A Reflection in Terror" (12/21/84)
Diana uses a blood sample to generate a deadly clone of the
Starchild Elizabeth, which escapes. Meanwhile, Bates locates the
rebel headquarters and sets up Julie.

"The Conversion" (1/4/85)
After Ham and Kyle are captured, the Leader's envoy Charles assumes
command of the alien forces and programs Ham with a new conversion
technique to kill Donovan during a prisoner exchange.

"The Hero" (1/11/85)
In retaliation for a "rebel" attack staged by aliens posing as
Resistance fighters, Bates' police arrest Resistance sympathizers,
including Robin, and threaten to execute a prisoner a day until
rebel leaders surrender.

"The Betrayal" (1/18/85)
Rebels abduct an alien medical student to treat a gravely wounded
Willie; Charles smuggles weapons into the open city in a plot to
overthrow the comatose Nathan Bates; Robin, Ham, and Chris are
dispatched to Chicago.

"The Rescue" (2/1/85)
Charles forces Diana to marry him, knowing that alien law requires
her to return home to bear his offspring; surrounded by Visitor
troops, Julie helps a former classmate's wife deliver a baby; the
Resistance searches for a new headquarters.

"The Champion" (2/8/85)
After investigating Charles' death, newly arrived Inspector General
Philip, Martin's twin brother, allows Lydia to choose trial by
combat with Diana in a laser duel to the death. Meanwhile, Donovan
helps a widow organize resistance in a scared town where the
sheriff is collecting "taxes" for the Visitors. (From the "Huh?"
department: Philip is Martin's twin brother? Aren't the Visitors
supposed to be wearing human masks?)

"The Wildcats" (2/15/85)
Diana and Lydia conspire to frame the Mother Ship's pharmacist for
Charles' murder. Meanwhile, a gang member the Resistance enlisted
to steal diptheria medicine from the Visitors is funneling
information to the aliens.

"The Littlest Dragon" (2/22/85)
Pursuing a personal vendetta, Philip trails a Fifth Columnist who
stole the power source to the Mother Ship's lasers, hoping it will
lead him to Donovan. Meanwhile, Diana plots to have Philip killed
by his military escort during the battle.

"War of Illusion" (3/8/85)
Henry Atkins, a computer hacker, refuses to help the Resistance
break into the Mother Ship's battle computer until they rescue his
father from the Visitors; at great risk, Philip steals the Leader's
invasion plan and gives it to Donovan.

"The Secret Underground" (3/15/85)
Julie and Donovan sneak aboard the Mother Ship to look for a list
naming all the rebel leaders, which was hidden by a Fifth Columnist
before he died; Diana arranges the transfer of Lydia's brother to
the Mother Ship so that he can be sacrificed during a traditional
Visitor rite, the Feast of Ramalon.

"Return of the Leader" (3/22/85)
The Leader orders a cease-fire and travels to Earth to negotiate
peace and take Elizabeth as his mate; Donovan and Philip square off
in a friendly duel, unaware that their "neutralized" weapons have
been tampered with; Diana plots to assassinate the Leader, but when
the attempt fails and her traitorism is revealed, she threatens to
blow up Earth. Her plan is thwarted by the rebels and she and
James are handcuffed and sentenced to death. In the final moments
of the series, Elizabeth leaves with the Leader for the home
planet, not knowing that Kyle has apparently stowed away on board
the Leader's shuttle. (Trivia note: The Visitors' name for their
world is revealed to be Sullam Voe. Prior to this episode, the
home planet was variously referred to in the novels and comics as
Sirius IV, Siria, and Saurus.)

"The Attack" (unfilmed)
While nearing execution, Diana and James escape during the panic
caused by the apparent explosion of the Leader's shuttle. Taking
command of the Fleet once more, Diana orders a full scale attack on
Earth. Julie is killed. The Leader and Elizabeth, escaping
destruction by going into another dimension, have a disagreement
over the value of the humans, with the Starchild leaving the Leader
and returning to Earth to help the rebels, among them Kyle and Ham,
search for a hidden power source much needed by the Leader.
THE NOVELS
Published by Pinnacle Books May 1984-September 1985 (Books
#1-11) and TOR Books September 1987-May 1988 (Books #12-16). All
titles are listed in publication order.

V, By A.C. Crispin
The novelization of both miniseries.

East Coast Crisis, By Howard Weinstein And A.C. Crispin
Set in New York, it parallels the Los Angeles events in the two
miniseries.

The Pursuit Of Diana, By Allen Wold
Back Cover Text: The alien stranglehold on Earth has been broken,
and the Resistance has triumphed. Victory is sweet until alien
leader Diana uses her powers to escape from her captors. The alarm
is raised, and the familiar beat of fear rises in the heart of the
Resistance. Diana must be stopped. Resistance member Donovan sets
off in the alien Mother Ship in pursuit of the fleeing Diana,
praying that he will be able to capture or destroy her before she
can reach alien forces and trigger another invasion of Earth.
During Donovan's absence, the victory continues to unravel. And
so, the battle once won, must start. (This novel is not an
adaptation of the first episode of the series.)

The Chicago Conversion, By Geo. W. Proctor
Back Cover Text: The Resistance fighters' armada of small aircraft
dots the sky. Behind each one streams a red contrail of
Visitor-fatal toxin--certain death to the aliens. But there is one
alien leader who will not run and hide in the vast darkness of
space--one ruthless Visitor with a plan to "convert" the Resistance
and win back the Earth. Meanwhile, in the city below, a man and a
woman who found refuge, and each other, on the bleak edge of the
battlefield, are about to risk their lives and their love to stop
the deadly consequences of the Chicago Conversion. (This novel
takes place after the events in V: The Final Battle.)

The Florida Project, By Tim Sullivan
Back Cover Text: The alien leader Diana has renewed her pledge to
break the Resistance. At a laboratory hidden in the Everglades, a
diabolical experiment is underway to bring success to her scheme.
There, pro-football star Jack Stern and his fiancee, biologist
Sabrina Fontaine, are unwilling participants in the creation of a
"master race"--human-reptilian hybrids of super strength, bred to
become soldiers against the Resistance. But even now, the leaders
of the Resistance are racing south to the alien's Everglades
hideout, and into a battle that must smash the Florida Project.

Prisoners And Pawns, By Howard Weinstein
Back Cover Text: The Earth has had another reprieve from alien
domination. A daring desert Resistance raid has reclaimed three
key human prisoners--marked for conversion or death aboard the
Mother Ship--from Commander Diana and her security chief, Lydia.
The furious Diana blames Lydia, who plans a terrible vengeance:
She will spin a diabolical web to snare Diana's power--and trap her
most hated enemies, Resistance heroes Mike Donovan and Ham Tyler.
Meanwhile, the Resistance has troubles of its own: Trusted friends
may be collaborating with the alien enemy. Every smile may hide a
secret, as the fate of every living soul in Los Angeles turns on
the violent outcome of plot and counterplot, disguise and
deception.

The Alien Swordmaster, By Somtow Sucharitkul
Back Cover Text: High above the ravaged Tokyo, deep within the
Visitor Mother Ship, the Japanese-American anthropologist, Tomoko
Jones, is being revived from suspension--to become the consort of
the fearsome Fieh Chan, Visitor Commander of Tokyo. Meanwhile, her
husband, Resistance fighter and ninjitsu expert Matt Jones, has
stumbled on a Visitor plot to kidnap the Earth's martial arts grand
masters for conversion. All clues point to Sugihara, a swordmaster
of dazzling gifts who saves the Americans' lives more than once.
Who is this man of mystery? The fates of Matt, Tomoko, and the
whole Resistance may be tied to the true identity of the Alien
Swordmaster. (This was the first in a planned trilogy.)

The Crivit Experiment, By Allen Wold
Back Cover Text: A new alien plot has been hatched--as vicious and
inhuman as the Visitors themselves. In the Piedmont Mountain
region of North Carolina, their top biologists, led by the coldly
brutal Visitor Leon, are breeding crivits--a new life form of great
power, appetite, and ferocity, which burrows in the sand and waits
to pounce, destroy, and devour. The Visitor plan is to turn them
loose in great numbers up and down the eastern beach coasts--where
they can disrupt communications and kill thousands of people.
Scientist Mark Casey, with the aid of some Resistance-inspired
students, has uncovered the scheme but cannot locate the secret
breeding grounds. For that, he needs the help of the locals--who
distrust him and his fellow outsiders almost as much as the deadly
Visitors!

The New England Resistance, By Tim Sullivan
Back Cover Text: As the war between the Visitors and the forces of
Resistance grows more intense, a stranger walks into a small New
England fishing village. He has volunteered for a secret
experiment, conducted by biochemist Dr. Randall Brunk and his
daughter, to develop a new toxin and antidote to fight the Visitors
and free Earth from their threat. His disguise is soon peeled away
and reveals him to be a Visitor. But is he an enemy? Or is their
truth to his story? Pythias Day, a local fisherman, believes
him--and puts his own life on the line to save the Visitor. Soon
they are both targets of a desperate hunt across an island
wilderness, with the Visitors' most brutal enforcer at their heels,
and the hope of the Resistance riding on their survival.

Death Tide, By A.C. Crispin And Deborah A. Marshall
Back Cover Text: Due to a critical water shortage on the Visitors'
home planet, alien leader Diana is ordered to suspend battle plans
and reactivate the desalinization plants off the coast of L.A.
When Resistance scientist Julie discovers a new type of Red Dust,
which reproduces in kelp and is impossible to filter, the Visitors
develop a deadly defoliant that will destroy the delicate
ecological balance and spell disaster for the West Coast. On
another front, Diana uses a new improved conversion technique to
plant, among the Resistance, a spy who will be accepted without
question. A person close to Donovan is now his greatest threat,
and if the Resistance is destroyed, there will be nobody left to
stop the horrible Death Tide.

The Texas Run, By Geo. W. Proctor
Back Cover Text: Barely escaping death from a Visitor ambush,
Resistance warrior Rick Hurley is rescued by Sheryl Lee Darcy and
a band of Texas freedom fighters carrying vital drugs to the sick
and wounded of their native state--where the Red Dust toxin, once
fatal to the lizard-like aliens, has lost its effect. The Visitors
have placed a stranglehold on the Dallas-Fort Worth area, rounding
up the terrified populace for cold storage aboard the Mother Ship.
There the Texas Resistance strike-and-hide guerilla raids, aimed at
the Visitors' processing centers, keep the inhuman enemy in
confusion and disarray. But when Sheryl Lee is taken prisoner,
it's Rick who plans a daring rescue, with the help of wild-man
rancher Charlie Scoggins, striking at the heart of the enemy
stronghold, across hundreds of miles of lizard-held terrain, at the
deadly, desperate end of the Texas Run.

Path To Conquest, By Howard Weinstein
Back Cover Text: The invading aliens--under the leadership of
their evil commander, Diana--undertake a two-pronged plan to smash
the Resistance and force the surrender of Earth. The first prong
is Project Icewind, a scheme to alter the world's weather and bring
an early, crushing winter. The second is the destruction of the
world's oil--lifeblood of the war effort and a freezing planet's
very survival! But ex-baseball star Dr. Pete Forsythe and diplomat
Lauren Stewart are on to the alien plot--and with the help of two
top scientists an answer may be, must be, found. The race is
on--from the icy North Atlantic to the streets of New York to the
parched sands of the Middle East...the brave fighters of the
Resistance are all that stand in the way of Visitor victory!

To Conquer The Throne, By Tim Sullivan
Back Cover Text: The alien Visitors, under their sadistic
commander, Medea, plot to seize Great Britain as a launching pad
for the conquest of Earth. Parliament has been infiltrated, and
the most hallowed shrines of democracy are about to be desecrated.
Gabriela Nicks, an American living in England, forced to join a
Resistance that is fragmented and possibly infiltrated by the
enemy, races to rally the fighters of Earth for one desperate
strike that may save the world, and all hope rides with a small
force facing insurmountable odds and sure defeat.

The Oregon Invasion, By Jayne Tannehill
Back Cover Text: The Visitor juggernaught has been slowed by a
toxin that is fatal to the reptilian invaders while not harming
Earthborn life, but the Visitors will allow nothing to stand
between them and the defeat of humanity. And their strike into the
Pacific Northwest seems to have a way to counteract the toxin. As
city after city falls and the human death toll mounts, Ruth Hogan,
a free-spirited artist, and Hadad, a Visitor opposed to the
invasion, desperately try to organize Resistance--while keeping one
step ahead of hunters sent by Visitor High Command that knows they
are the only ones who can stop the final Visitor victory.
(Elizabeth's death is predicted in the alien religion of Zon.)

Below The Threshold, By Allen Wold
Back Cover Text: Psychologist Jack Page treats many who are
struggling to deal with the reality of an alien invasion of Earth.
But suddenly the Vietnam veteran's patients are losing their fear
of the reptilian Visitors. Suddenly they are accepting, even
welcoming. Suddenly the Resistance is fading. If Jack Page can't
find the cause and stop it, the last hope of Earth is doomed. But
the insidious subversion is reaching out for everyone below the
threshold.

Symphony Of Terror, By Somtow Sucharitkul
Back Cover Text: Carrying the secret of a technological
breakthrough by the reptilian Visitors that may mean the final
defeat for an invaded Earth, Matt Jones, martial arts instructor,
must fight his way across a United States split into a crazy-quilt
of enemy-occupied territory, free-zones, and no-man's lands. The
Visitors have called out all forces to stop him, and he must deal
with possible traitors and allies with plans of their own. But
they don't know who they are facing: A Ninja who will send anyone
who gets in his way straight to Hell.

THE COMIC BOOKS

18-issue series, published by DC Comics, February 1985-July
1986. Plot synopses are taken from The Visitor Home Page,
http://www.enqueue.com/v/ with credits by Jerry Seward.

"City on the Edge"
Written by Cary Bates
Pencilled by Carmine Infantino
Inked by Tony DeZuniga
Lettered by John Costanza
Colored by Michele Wolfman

A group of renegade Visitors attacks the Club Creole in an effort
to eliminate Ham Tyler per Nathan Bates' orders. Not knowing of
this secret deal, Diana is furious that her troops disobeyed her
personal orders to not cause any disturbances. Mike, Julie, and
Willie fly a skyfighter into a rural town and discover that there
is some sort of conspiracy between the townspeople and the
Visitors. Meanwhile, Ham and Chris flee the group of Visitors
trying to kill them.

"The Town with No Shame"
Written by Cary Bates
Pencilled by Carmine Infantino
Inked by Tony DeZuniga
Lettered by Carrie Spiegle
Colored by Michele Wolfman

Mike and Julie venture into the rural town and realize that the
Visitors offer the town peace in exchange for free access to the
natural springs nearby. The townspeople put Mike and Julie in
jail, but a kid helps them by informing Willie back on the shuttle
of the situation. Meanwhile, Ham and Chris outrun and outgun the
Visitor headhunters.

"Encounter!"
Written by Cary Bates
Pencilled by Carmine Infantino
Inked by Tony DeZuniga
Lettered by Carrie Spiegle
Colored by Michele Wolfman

Mike, Julie, and Willie convince the townspeople to fight back, and
the Visitor cargo shuttle is destroyed along with all its troops,
except for the commanding officer who flees back to Diana. At the
very end, Ham and Chris force the Visitor Lorne to bring them to
Bates under the guise that they are dead.

"Alien Conflict!"
Written by Cary Bates
Pencilled by Tod Smith
Inked by Tony DeZuniga
Lettered by Carrie Spiegle
Colored by Michele Wolfman

Ham and Chris spare Bates because he needs the duo to locate and
save Kyle and Elizabeth, who fled from an incident with a Visitor
patrol and are in danger of being captured. Ham and Chris locate
Elizabeth and bring her to Bates to recover, but Kyle is nowhere to
be found. When she wakes up, Elizabeth says she can see Kyle--and
he's in danger! Meanwhile, the astronomer Earl Meagan seeks refuge
with the Resistance, after his invitation to Diana for a peace
summit is accepted. Meagan hopes for peace, but he seems to have
something else up his sleeve in the event that peace is not the
outcome of the summit.

"The Price of Peace"
Written by Cary Bates
Pencilled by Tod Smith
Inked by Alfredo Alcala
Lettered by Carrie Spiegle
Colored by Michele Wolfman

Elizabeth reveals that Kyle is captive at Camp Lakka, the prison
where Visitors experiment on perfecting humans as a food source.
Ham and Chris enter the camp disguised as Visitors with Bates as
their prisoner. Meanwhile, Earl Meagan arrives on Diana's Mother
Ship for the peace summit. Unbeknownst to each other, Diana plans
to convert the scientist, and Earl plans to destroy her ship with
the microbomb implanted in his body. When the Resistance realizes
what Earl has been up to all along, Donovan rushes to prevent the
bomb from being activated. But at the end, it already has been
triggered.

"Shatterday"
Written by Cary Bates
Pencilled by Carmine Infantino
Inked by Tony DeZuniga
Lettered by Carrie Spiegle
Colored by Michele Wolfman

Ham and Chris rescue Bates and his son Kyle from the camp, along
with the other prisoners. They detonate explosives, destroying the
camp and all the experiments within it. Donovan and Willie rescue
Earl from the Mother Ship, but Earl later pilots his own
shuttlecraft back toward the Mother Ship to finish his mission.
When three other craft surround him to re-capture him for Diana,
his bomb goes off, and only the four shuttles are destroyed. But
everyone back on Earth believes Earl was killed by the Visitors and
he becomes a martyr for the Resistance cause.

"Tennyson"
Written by Mindy Newell
Pencilled by Carmine Infantino
Inked by Tony DeZuniga
Lettered by Carrie Spiegle
Colored by Michele Wolfman

Julie faces her inner fears of being alone when she travels back to
her hometown, not knowing that Diana is aware of her presence and
has sent an assassin to find her. Julie meets up with an old high
school buddy, and different as he seems to her, he ends up saving
her from the Visitors.

"Printer's Devil"
Written by Bob Rozakis
Pencilled by Carmine Infantino
Inked by Tony DeZuniga
Lettered by Carrie Spiegle
Colored by Michele Wolfman

Robin, Chris, and Ham make their way toward Chicago, and on the way
help a small town's freedom press discover that disguised Visitors
are in their midst and intend to thwart the publication of their
newspaper. Robin falls for a kind man, but he turns out to be one
of those Visitors, and Robin is distraught over the ordeal. Ham
and Chris help the people lure out the spies and the press is
saved.

"The Poison in the Apple"
Written by Cary Bates
Pencilled by Carmine Infantino
Inked by Tony DeZuniga
Lettered by Carrie Spiegle
Colored by Michele Wolfman

Mike, Julie, Willie, Elizabeth, and Kyle travel to New York to
revive the Resistance there, because spring is nearing and they
fear Diana will attempt to take the city again. Mayor Allison
Stein (from the novel East Coast Crisis) declines their offer, but
it is revealed that the mayor is actually a Visitor in disguise
planted by Diana. Diana sends more disguised soldiers to eliminate
Mike and Julie, but it doesn't work and the L.A. Resistance members
are alerted to the aliens' presence in New York. At the end, a
Visitor assassin has been dispatched by Lydia to kill Donovan, as
several citizens come to Mike and Julie for help to save their
city.

"The Deadly Rites of Spring!"
Written by Cary Bates
Pencilled by Carmine Infantino
Inked by Tony DeZuniga
Lettered by Carrie Spiegle
Colored by Michele Wolfman

As the L.A. Resistance begins to organize a New York group, Mayor
Stein appears and confesses to being a Visitor in disguise--but
she's also part of the Fifth Column. She shares her plan to thwart
Diana's East Coast invasion, which centers around a device that
will be planted on the Empire State Building. The device will
alter the weather, keeping the area in cool late-winter conditions
and keeping the Red Dust in effect. The assassin fails in his
attempt to kill Donovan and the device is implanted successfully.
The Mayor Stein Visitor gives up her life when Diana discovers her
true allegiance, but the damage has already been done.

"Meanwhile, Out in Space..."
Written by Cary Bates
Pencilled by Carmine Infantino
Inked by Tony DeZuniga
Lettered by Carrie Spiegle
Colored by Michele Wolfman

Prince Bron, the Leader's son, is sent to Earth to see the war
firsthand, but the pilots of his ship turn out to be Fifth
Columnists that turn Bron over to the Resistance. The Visitors
attack their new base, not knowing Bron is there and Willie is
taken prisoner. Julie, Mike, Elizabeth, and Kyle escape with Bron.

"Siege"
Written by Cary Bates
Pencilled by Carmine Infantino
Inked by Tony DeZuniga
Lettered by John Costanza
Colored by Michele Wolfman

Using the face-creator on the shuttlecraft, Bron is made to look
human and the group splits up. Mike and Julie take Bron, all three
disguised as a farming family. On the Mother Ship, Lydia continues
her torture of Willie, but Diana has her own plans and disguises
one of her soldiers as Willie.

"The Prince and the Power!"
Written by Cary Bates
Pencilled by Carmine Infantino
Inked by Tony DeZuniga
Lettered by Carrie Spiegle
Colored by Michele Wolfman

Willie escapes the Mother Ship, just as Diana sends the impostor
Willie to infiltrate and destroy the remaining Resistance. In a
prisoner exchange, Bron is being returned to the Visitors in a
shuttle piloted by the fake Willie, but the real Willie had already
sneaked aboard. Willie defeats his impostor and returns the
shuttle and Bron to the Resistance.

"Conquest--At Any Cost!"
Written by Cary Bates
Pencilled by Carmine Infantino
Inked by Tony DeZuniga
Lettered by Carrie Spiegle
Colored by Michele Wolfman

Mike, Julie, and Bron arrive in a rural town and discover that its
only inhabitants are children. They discover that all the adults
were taken away by the Visitors for some unknown reason. Kyle and
Elizabeth set up a new base on the Catalina islands, where new
Resistance member Miki challenges Kyle's authority to command the
group. After a fight, the two come to terms with each other.
Meanwhile, after an unsuccessful rescue attempt on Prince Bron,
Lydia is sentenced to death for failing the Leader.

"Blood on the Wind"
Written by Cary Bates
Pencilled by Carmine Infantino
Inked by Tony DeZuniga
Lettered by Carrie Spiegle
Colored by Michele Wolfman

Lydia is executed and Diana continues her plans to escalate the
war. Meanwhile, in Chicago, Ham and Chris are captured by the
Visitors while investigating a secret base in a warehouse. The
installation is a center where Visitors who have lost their fervor
for the war are being brainwashed to fight the humans. With help
from Fifth Columnists who have infiltrated the base, Ham and Chris
demolish the place and escape with the other prisoners--all adults
from the same town Mike and Julie are in. Back at that town, the
children, led by the oldest among them, have discovered that Bron
is a Visitor and have sentenced him, Mike, and Julie to die as
spies.

"Peace on Earth?"
Written by Cary Bates
Pencilled by Carmine Infantino
Inked by Tony DeZuniga
Lettered by Carrie Spiegle
Colored by Michele Wolfman

At the new Catalina Resistance base, Kyle and Miki are testing
modifications to a skyfighter that make it capable of undersea
travel when Elizabeth has a vision and insists that they must
return to Los Angeles. Back at the town of Mayville, preparations
are being made for an execution when a skyfighter lands, having
detected a signal from Prince Bron. With the help of his Sirian
crystal, Bron and his two fellow prisoners escape from their jail
cell. While fleeing, Bron throws himself in the path of a Visitor
laser beam intended for Donovan. In a mystical energy cocoon,
Bron's body levitates into space where it is retrieved by a
sentinel ship of the Leader's Royal Fleet. Diana boards the ship
to see if Bron really is dead and discovers Lydia on board. Lydia
explains that the Leader planned everything from the
beginning--that Bron was sent to Earth to observe the humans and
their culture firsthand. Even Lydia's death was faked. Back on
Earth, as the Resistance is reunited in L.A., they are suddenly
cornered and about to be vaporized--when a booming voice is heard
from the Mother Ship, ordering "Cease all hostilities." (This
comic leads directly into the final aired TV episode, "Return of
the Leader.")

"For Old Times' Sake!"
Written by Paul Kupperberg
Pencilled by Denys Cowan
Inked by Dick Giordano and Arne Starr
Lettered by Carrie Spiegle
Colored by Michele Wolfman

A flashback story focusing on Elias Taylor. A former flame comes
between Elias and death.

"End Game"
Written by Paul Kupperberg
Pencilled by Denys Cowan
Inked by Dick Giordano
Lettered by Carrie Spiegle
Colored by Michele Wolfman

Part two of the Elias Taylor flashback story. Elias is up against
the wall and isn't sure what to do and Diana is closer than ever to
a means with which she can rule Earth.
V WEB SITES

Many of these sites provided material for this
cross-reference. For more information, point your web browser to
these URLs:

http://www.prairienet.org/~drthiel/v.htm
http://www.enqueue.com/v/
http://www.scifi.com/v/
* * * * * * * *

Night People: Night Of The Owl
A Short-Story By L. G. Frey

P A R T F O U R

[The Story So Far: The year is 2020. In an Upper Peninsula
section of Michigan that is in a slightly altered universe
(quieter, less modern than today)--the same universe referenced in
my short story "The Visitor" (issue 60), Brian and Julie Cullens
take their teenage daughter Riva to a resort called Lost Gull Lake
near a U.P. town called Cullensville (named for their ancestors
who founded the town) to visit their uncle Eric Cullens at his
mansion, Gullhaven; while there, Julie hopes to see her writer
cousin Douglas Thorpe (protagonist of "The Visitor"). Riva senses
she is being watched by someone, a someone who disappears before
anyone else can see her--a someone who turns out to be her
long-lost relative Emmeline, Eric's older sister, who was turned
into a vampire by accident in 1967 by a British vampire named Colin
Barnard. Emmeline now lives in the catacombs of Gullhaven,
sleeping by day in dark crypts and working as Eric's housekeeper by
night, feeding quietly off unsuspecting donors to sustain her. But
an unpleasant surprise greets her as she prepares to sleep after a
busy night of watching their visitors, feeding from a donor, and
cleaning the mansion: Groundskeeper Mark Macklom and his reporter
brother Melvin have poisoned her usual resting places with garlic
and crosses, and the two of them attack her with a cross, stake,
and mallet before she manages to turn into a bat and escape.
Undaunted, Melvin plots to use an ancient spell to trap Emmeline,
and Riva discovers housekeeper Emmy Barnard is really vampire
Emmeline Cullens. Julie, meanwhile, is worried because she can't
get in touch with Douglas, and Emmeline remembers that he was one
of her recent donors and worries that she might have infected him
with the vampire curse. On the way to find him, however, Emmeline
is ambushed by Melvin and Mark, and the reporter tries to enact a
spell that will send her out of this realm--only to get caught in
it himself and end up with Emmeline in the midst of a seance being
held in a haunted house in New York City. Emmeline remembers that
this is the apartment she and Colin Barnard lived in many years ago
until someone attacked her and stabbed her, leaving her for dead
and the musician who lived nearby who had fallen in love with her
had jumped off his balcony in grief, surviving but ending up in a
coma. Emmeline remembers that to spare him the lingering death of
life support machines, she changed him into a vampire, told him
what she had done, then parted company with him thirty-nine years
ago. Wondering where exactly they have ended up, Emmeline, Melvin,
and a vampire cat name Paws depart from the haunted apartment and
end up in Central Park, suddenly learning from the date on a
newspaper that they re there the night before Simon And Garfunkel's
famous 1981 concert and are completely uncertain how they will
return to their time. Meanwhile, back in Cullensville, Emmeline's
last victim, private investigator Cadwallader Wendel, awakens from
his trance and realizes he's lost the very person he came to
Cullensville to find. He catches up with Doug Thorpe and
encourages him to eat and get his strength back, telling him that
Emmeline just used him as a donor but did not turn him into a
vampire as his subconscious suspects. Eric, meanwhile, continues
his search for Emmeline and runs into Mark, who confesses about
their sorcery attack on Emmeline, and the two of them discover a
warm body at the site of the spell....]

Lightning flickered in the gloom over the dark woods and the
thunder chuckled with malice as Mark Macklom knelt on the damp,
cold ground by his brother's motionless body, while Eric Cullens
knelt to get a better look at Melvin. Mark's trembling made his
flashlight jiggle; Eric took it. He felt Melvin's pulse and chest,
then said, "He's in bad shape. Stay with him while I get help."
Eric hurried back to Gullhaven and called the ambulance. When
the paramedics arrived, he led them through the woods to the
clearing where the two Mackloms were. After a quick examination,
the medics put the unconscious man on a stretcher and carried him
to the ambulance.

Eric and Mark spent an uncomfortably long time waiting at
Parkington General Hospital's emergency room until a doctor finally
came out to talk to them. "Mr. Macklom has second-degree burns on
his side and a ragged cut on his right toe; he's still
unconscious," the doctor told them. "Lightning is so unpredictable
we can never be sure what it did to a person until we examine him
thoroughly. We have to keep him in the intensive care unit until
he's out of the woods." The doctor ended his report and returned
to the ER without another word.
Then Deputy Tobin beckoned to Eric with a clipboard full of
report forms. The burly lawman in the brown uniform towered over
Eric and asked, "How are the Mackloms connected to you?"
"Mark's the caretaker at Gullhaven and Melvin's his brother,"
Eric replied.
"How did you know Mr. Macklom was struck by lightning?"
"Mark told me about the accident and I found him in the
woods."
The deputy sighed. "Well, I'll let you go now."

While he drove his Willies roadster home to Gullhaven, Eric
wondered where Emmeline might be. He didn't understand how he
sensed his undead sister, but there were so many things he didn't
understand any more.

A heat wave simmered Michigan's Upper Peninsula the next day.
The temperature was 98 degrees Fahrenheit and the air was humid;
the sun glared down from the blue sky, with no hint of the previous
night's storm. Brian, Julie and Riva Cullens spent the morning
swimming in Lost Gull Lake and resting on their beach towels,
enjoying the view of the deep green woods around the sparkling blue
lake.
While a great flock of seagulls soared in the clear blue sky,
Riva imagined they were practicing flying, like the gulls in the
book Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach; she wished she
could fly with them. That was actually a little disappointing.
She knew she could never really imagine flying, unlike her weird
relative, Emmeline Cullens. She hoped Emmeline would tell her
about some of the strange experiences she might have had since she
ran away from home, and Riva wondered what it was like to be a
night person. Then her mother said, "Wake up, dreamer; time to go
back and clean house. Aunt Minnie is coming to dinner tonight."
The girl sighed at the interruption, but she followed her parents
up the path through the woods, to the log structure.
Later that night, when Aunt Minnie came to dinner in the
cabin, the talkative elderly lady asked, "Did you hear what
happened last night?" Then she told them, "Melvin was hit by
lightning and he's still unconscious. Eric told me about it this
morning, but he's really worried about Emily because he can't find
her anywhere on the estate. I knew she'd run off."
The judgmental remark angered Riva, but she managed to keep
from snapping at Aunt Minnie, saying, "No, Emmy went to find Mom's
cousin, Doug, but she didn't come back last night."
"Why did she do that?" Aunt Minnie asked.
"I don't know," Riva said, shaking her head. "I hope nothing
happened to her. You said Mark said Emmy was a monster, and Melvin
was trying to interview Emmy for the New Age Inquisitor. Maybe
they did something to her!"
Brian tried to assure Riva, "Now, honey, Uncle Eric wouldn't
let Mark hurt anyone."
Riva wasn't sure her uncle knew how much Mark and Melvin
bullied Emmeline, but he was old and he might be unable to stop
them, physically. She asked, "Why doesn't Uncle Eric fire Mark and
kick him and Melvin out of here?"
Nobody could answer that.

Cadwallader Wendel decided the next step of his search would
be a visit to the Lost Gull Lake Resort to see if Douglas Thorpe's
young friend really lived there. The woman at the registration
cabin told him, "She isn't there right now, but you might ask Eric
Cullens."
Mr. Wendel drove to the main house, went to the front door,
and knocked. A thin grey-haired blue-eyed gentleman answered the
door.
Cad asked, "May I see Mr. Eric Cullens?"
The old man replied, "I am Eric Cullens."
"I'm a private detective, and I'm trying to find a certain
girl. I've been told your housekeeper here fits the description.
I have to know whether she's the girl I'm looking for."
Mr. Cullens ordered, "Let me see your ID," and the detective
presented his badge-I.D. card. Mr. Cullens shrugged, "Okay, come
in. Would you like some coffee, Mr. Wendel?"
"Thanks." While Mr. Cullens led him to the kitchen, the
detective told him, "Oh, just call me Cad. It's short for
Cadwallader."
"You poor guy. I'm just Eric."
"Your registrar said you had a housekeeper here," he prompted
Eric.
"Yes, but she disappeared last night. Emily had a lot of
allergies, especially sunlight, so my caretaker, Mark Macklom, said
she was a vampire, so he called his brother Melvin, a reporter for
the New Age Inquisitor."
"I see. Um, there is something I don't understand. My client
told me everything he knew about the girl he hired me to find.
This girl's real name was Emmeline Cullens. She traveled with him
and told him all about her hometown and her family. He also said
he and Emmeline are vampires. Has Emmeline told you how he changed
her?"
The old man seemed to be taking this disturbing subject
amazingly well, Cad thought. Eric barely seemed fazed by anything
he mentioned.
"Yes," Eric replied. "Emmy told me how she was bitten by
rattlesnakes and Colin tried to save her life, but he made her a
vampire by mistake, then persuaded her to go and travel with him
because he didn't want to expose our family to problems like his.
Last night, my nephew's wife tried to call her cousin, but Doug
didn't answer his phone, so she called his uncle Galen, who
couldn't get an answer, either. So he went looking for Douglas.
My niece Riva told me that Emmy heard about it and went looking for
him, too. Emmy seemed to be really worried about Doug. Galen
found Doug and called Julie, but Emmy didn't come home. Doug
didn't say anything about her. Then the same night, Mark said his
brother tried to use a spell to control Emmy, but the spell
backfired, and so they were struck by lightning. At first, Mark
said that both Melvin and Emmy disappeared, but when I made Mark
show me where this thing happened, we found Melvin. He's in the
Parkington General Hospital now. The last I heard, he was still
unconscious. Mark's sitting with him up there."
The detective nodded, then asked, "How well do you know
Douglas Thorpe?"
Eric replied, "I only know who he is. His uncle Galen Breen
was one of my school buddies forty years ago. Why was Doug making
himself so scarce?
"Well, the kid thought he was becoming a vampire, like Emmy,
so he was scared, but he'll be okay. Does anyone else know Emmy?"
"Er, my niece Riva visited with her last night. They got
along like normal teenagers. Emmy's still very young in many
ways."
"Of course." Cadwallader cleared his throat. "Vampires don't
age." Then he asked, "How can you let a vampire stay in your
house?"
Eric looked a bit askance at the question. "She is still my
sister."
"You're guilty too if you let her attack people for their
blood."
Eric furiously slammed the table with his fist, spilling his
coffee cup. "Look, in case you haven't noticed, these vampires
have us in their power. Have you ever tried to report the attacks
that your client made to anyone? No? Then you share the guilt for
his attacks, too."
Cad Wendel conceded that point. "I guess you're right. I did
try to report him once, when I realized what he was, but I couldn't
say the words. The next time I met with Mr. Calhoun, he stared at
me so sternly, I thought he'd kill me if he thought he had to." He
shuddered. "Well, I need to see that clearing."
"O.K., I'll show you the way."

Eric led Cad out the back door, then into the woods, to the
clearing with the granite boulder, where they found a rope, a paint
brush in a pail of reconstituted ox-blood--its strong smell gave it
away instantly--and notes for a spell on vampires.
"Hmm," Cad remarked. "It looks like Mr. Macklom has been
dabbling in sorcery." He examined the strange burns on Emmeline's
small black shoes and said, "If Emmy was wearing these when she was
struck by lightning, and you can't find her, I'm afraid she was
vaporized."
"No!" Eric disagreed. "I have a psychic link with Emmy; I
know she is alive somewhere, but she can't contact us."
"I have to report this to Mr. Calhoun tonight," Cad told
Eric. "He's staying nearby. Can you arrange a visit at the
hospital?"
"Yes, if it will locate Emmy."

Back in 1981, in New York, the Anderson family was still
anxious; Cyril and Sharon held each other's cold, sweaty hands
while their children, Daryl and Jennifer, shivered and crossed
goose-pimpled arms. Their fine strawberry-blonde hair crackled and
stood on end from the lightning in the living room.
Emmeline and Melvin had vanished when two policemen entered
the apartment with grumpy old Mrs. Nash behind them. Looking like
a painted penguin in a purple robe stretched around her lumpy body,
with her grey hair in plastic curlers and a pink scarf, Mrs. Nash
complained, "These are the worst neighbors I've ever had! When the
Andersons bought this place from me they promised to fix it up and
run it. They've been sawing, drilling and hammering all day,
making a racket all the time. Then, every night for the last three
weeks, I've heard three terrible screams that scare the living
daylights out of me, that'd wake the dead! Then this charlatan
started this dreadful chanting tonight! I just can't take this
anymore!"
Dr. Saul Reidmoore's stout frame swelled in insulted outrage.
He explained, "We are trying to end a spiritual disturbance which
is the real source of the screams Mrs. Nash complained about. This
little girl did scream tonight, but it was only because lightning
struck the building and frightened her."
Officers Kent and O'Grady exchanged glances. Kent remembered
coming here five years ago when the same landlady reported someone
had stabbed a girl to death in the same unit. The NYPD responded
to the call, but their search for evidence did not reveal a spot of
spilled blood in the whole place, so they concluded that nothing
had happened, after all. Kent had made out the report on the case.
He had stated that the complainant was a panicky lady who had
merely had a nightmare about the girl who lived in this unit. Kent
noticed the Andersons were pale and trembling with fear; so he told
them, "Relax, nobody's gonna hurt you. Please don't make any more
disturbances at night. And take it easy, Mrs. Nash. Don't be so
jumpy about what your neighbors are doing." The two policemen left
Parkview Manor, returning to their other duties.
Before Mrs. Nash left, Dr. Reidmoore asked her, "Why didn't
you tell me you had witnessed these phenomena, too?"
She replied, "Well, I thought the Andersons were making that
awful noise. I couldn't tell the police about the ghost--they
wouldn't believe me. Officer Kent came here in 1975 when I
reported that murder. I don't know where the girl and all that
blood went after she was killed but I know it happened. That darn
cop said it was only a nightmare, but he didn't know what he was
talking about."
Dr. Reidmoore explained, "If you knew Emily Barnard, she might
have responded better with a familiar person in the seance. Why
didn't you tell the Andersons about her?" He wasn't sure she would
have been much help in the seance, considering Emily's escape when
she had heard Irene Nash's voice.
The ex-landlady responded skeptically, "How would that help?"
She shook her head. "I don't believe in contacting spirits."
"Well, what was Emily like when she lived here?"
Disapprovingly, Mrs. Nash told Dr. Reidmoore, "She was really
strange. She was a shy little bookworm, but she and Mr. Barnard
slept all day and gallivanted around every night. When I cleaned
the place to help Mr. Barnard move out, there wasn't any food in
the kitchen. They only had a percolator, coffee, cream, sugar and
some china." She paused, then added, "They also had blood pudding.
What do you suppose that meant?"
Instead of waiting for an answer, Mrs. Nash excused herself
and waddled back to her apartment next door. While he packed his
paraphernalia, Dr. Reidmoore said, "We must conduct another seance
tomorrow night, to finish the work I started. Good night." Daryl
escorted Dr. Reidmoore to the main door.
Jennifer grumbled, "It's easy for him to say good night. He
doesn't have to share his house with ghosts."
Sharon Anderson smoothed her daughter Jennifer's long, curly,
static-charged hair, saying, "No, it isn't easy for him, Jenny.
Mediums get in contact with some spirits by knowing other spirits,
and so being haunted is part of their job."
Jennifer exclaimed, "Boy, what a weird job!"
When Daryl came back from the main door, he overheard the
conversation and said, "I thought parapsychologists, psychics and
mediums were all different things. Dr. Reidmoore said he's a
parapsychologist, but then he was a medium, and he sure seemed
psychic. I don't get it." No one tried to explain it to the
boy--they were equally baffled by the situation.
Finally, Sharon noticed the time. "It's way past midnight,
kids. Go to bed."

Alone in his dull, undecorated room, Daryl couldn't go to
sleep. He kept thinking about Emily Barnard. He wondered if he
could ask some questions at the next seance. He hadn't believed in
ghosts or vampires until his parents bought the "carpenter's
special" rooming house and the ghostly replays of that grisly
attempted murder in this apartment had begun. He wondered who
stabbed that poor kid. The intruder's image was too fuzzy to make
out. He didn't need anyone to tell him that Emily Barnard was a
vampire; he had had several dreams in which she hugged a
vaguely-familiar young man, then sank her sharp little fangs into
his neck. Daryl sensed Emily had a crush on that man, and hoped
she wouldn't get a crush on him: Vampires were notorious for
obsessions and stalking. How could that knifer succeed with a
metal blade when it took a wooden stake to kill a vampire? Maybe
he actually failed; Emily Barnard was as real as a living soul when
she had appeared tonight. He was sure of only one thing: He had
mixed feelings about that poor, annoying vampire.

Emmeline Cullens and Paws talked while they strolled through
New York's Central Park. Melvin Macklom became invisible and
followed them. Emmeline asked Paws, "How did you become a night
person?"
"I was born a vampire," he replied. "Mom was an Oriental
vampire cat and Dad was a Manx cat with big feet like mine."
When he heard that, Melvin tried to scrounge a pencil stub and
some scrap paper to take notes of this incredible information for
his bit in the New Age Inquisitor--but his hand passed right
through it, so he couldn't hold anything. He became visible to
Emmeline--she seemed to know he was there, anyway--and asked,
"Emmy, what's wrong with me? Why can't I use these?"
She told him, "Your astral body can't hold anything."
"This wouldn't've happened if you'd let me interview you!"
"Don't blame me!" Emmeline retorted. "You ambushed me and
cast that spell! Sorcery hurts its users as much as its victims!"
Melvin accused her, "You aren't a victim, you're a vampire!"
"Yes, I am a victim! I was changed by mistake!"
"You still bite people to drink their blood!"
"I don't hurt them much," Emmeline claimed. "They can get up
and leave when I'm done. You can't say that for your food! You
eat dead animals! Maybe carrots and potatoes scream when you
uproot them, and lettuce shrieks when you shred it, but you don't
think about that."
"But humans must eat!" Melvin insisted. "What do you expect
us to do, live by photosynthesis?"
Bored, yawning, Paws exclaimed, "Oh, stop growling at each
other! Come and fly with me." The catlike man and the girl became
bats and took off together with Melvin gliding along as they flew
to an abandoned part of Greenwich, where rusted fire escapes
dangled from the cracked, pitted brick sides of factories. They
flew through alleys that looked like dark rivers of debris, until
they landed behind an old warehouse.
The vampire cat reassumed his manlike form, then opened the
rusty iron door to the old warehouse where his friends lived. The
cavernous interior was dark; shadows filled the rooms within the
larger room, sectioned off by old wooden shelves stuffed with
unidentifiable objects and dust. There, Paws became a yellowish
Manx cat again, climbed into a chair, licked his six-toed paw
first, then his seven-toed paw, and curled up for a catnap.
A beatnik in a black turtleneck and ragged black jeans, who
squinted through his shaggy bangs of dyed black hair, met Emmeline
and Melvin at the door. He stopped short and stared at Emmeline,
exclaiming, "Are you that night child? Remember me? I'm Nathaniel
Blake; I want to thank you."
Emmeline recognized the poet she had met in the Red Eye Coffee
House in London, Ontario in 1969. "Nathaniel Blake? I thought I
had made you forget me."
Blake grinned smugly. "Well, you tried to make me forget, but
I remembered everything because I wanted to be a night person."
"Are you serious?" Emmeline couldn't believe it. "Why do you
want this curse?"
"Are you kidding?" Nathaniel asked back. "It's great! I can
be any creature, experience its senses, and fly!"
A man's gravelly voice sighed, "There he goes again." Another
NP emerged from the book department. He said, "I am Gaius Tertian
Tiberius, but most of you American barbarians call me 'Guy'." The
ancient Roman had short black hair, dark, glittery eyes, and pale
olive coloring. His oversized black t-shirt imitated a Roman tunic
while his toga was a black bed sheet. He eyed Emmeline's bony face
and figure, frowning at her prim white blouse, navy blue skirt and
navy blue sweater, then remarked, "You're a typical reluctant
little vampire. You don't take enough blood, so you're starving."
Emmeline told them, "I've been getting by on coffee and four
ounces of blood a night for fifty years."
"Huh? You were only fifteen when we met in 1969," Nathaniel
argued.
"That's going by linear time, but this isn't the same. I'm
over sixty now." Then she introduced her odd traveling companion.
"This man in his astral body is Melvin Macklom. He's a reporter
who writes about vampires. Last night, he used sorcery to force me
to obey him, but it backfired and trapped both of us, then we were
pulled into a seance in an apartment where I lived once. We have
to go home as soon as possible."
Melvin declared, "Yes, you've got to help us go home!"
"Why?" Nathaniel shrugged. "You could have great experiences,
but you're whining, 'I wanna go home!' Mortals have no sense of
adventure!"
"What's so adventurous about immortality?" Emmeline asked.
"Even the most daring stunt is boring if it can't kill you.
Anyway, Melvin must return to his body in our time so he doesn't
become a real ghost."
"I don't like him," Nathaniel sneered. "Let him die."
"No, I can't let him die. I'm not fond of him either, but I
have to go back, too," Emmeline explained. "I'm worried that I've
accidentally changed someone." She couldn't help but think about
Douglas Thorpe, the writer in the Piney Lake Resort, such a nice
man.
"Who cares?" Nathaniel shrugged.
Emmeline snapped, "I care!"
"You're so square, you're cubical," Nathaniel sneered.
Gaius ordered, "Stop it, Nathaniel;" then promised, "I'll try
to help you, young lady. So, you lived in New York a few years
ago?"
Emmeline nodded. "Yes, sir. Colin and I had a flat near
Central Park, until someone attacked me and we left. The people
who live there now hired a psychic to ghosts, but they're really
sensing emotions from the attack."
"I see," Gaius acknowledged. "They can wave magnets where
they sense the lingering emotions, then exorcize you. That might
send you back to your time. But surrender to the exorcism.
Spirits suffer in exorcism because they fight it."
Emmeline replied, "I understand," but she was nervous.
"Don't worry, Emmy," Gaius reassured her. "Just rest today."
He showed her a cot in a dark, windowless room.

Emmeline slept for a few hours, then awoke to attend that
concert in the park. Normally, she didn't dare go outside in the
afternoon, but a dense cloud cover darkened that day's sky. She
would also travel through the storm drains under the park, to avoid
the sun.
Melvin objected, "Wait a minute, Emmy! Where are you going?"
"I'm going to Simon and Garfunkel's Concert in Central Park
today," she told him. "I missed it the first time, but I won't
miss it again."
"What?" Melvin gasped. "You can't go outside now! It's broad
daylight! You'll burn up and die! Then how will I get home?"
Oozing sarcasm, Emmy replied, "Your concern is so touching.
Don't worry, I can avoid the sun, especially on a cloudy day."
Melvin shook his translucent head, mumbling, "You're nuts!"

September 19, 1981 arrived with 500,000 mortals in Central
Park to hear Simon and Garfunkel again. There were tense moments
when some swarthy aliens attacked a short woman in a black caped
coat--her other-worldly friends shouted, "Laura!" and helped her;
a disturbed young man accosted Paul Simon during his new song; the
young man was carried off the stage. Emmeline remembered that the
interrupted song, "The Late Great Johnny Ace," was edited out of
the live recording, but Paul Simon performed the complete song on
David Letterman's show in May, 1982--with another eerie
interruption at the same point as before.
Near the end of the concert, the girl in the caped coat urged
a man wearing a yellow shirt, dark pants and a yellow-and-brown
striped scarf, "Captain! Yell 'Sounds of Silence'!"
Shouting, "Sounds of Silence! Sounds of Silence!" the captain
confirmed he did like that song. Emmy nearly forgot to hide her
fanged smile.
"Well, you know," Paul Simon acknowledged them, "we wanted to
have fireworks tonight, but they wouldn't let us have that, so
we'll make our own fireworks here on Earth tonight!"
After "Sounds of Silence," the concert ended with an encore of
"Late in the Evening"--which was also edited out of the album.
Emmeline tried to follow the space travelers, but they vanished
even faster than she could, so she gave up on meeting them.
Instead, she took a walk in the wilder part of the park, where
the trees and weeds grew more naturally and the night's shadows
were deeper. The quiet evening encouraged introspection. Emmeline
regretted how her crush on Ian Stuart had brought that hitman's
attack which haunted that apartment. The report of her supposed
death triggered Ian's attempted suicide and coma, which had led to
her idea to make Ian a vampire.
While they hid in the sub-cellar at Parkview Manor, Colin had
scolded Emmeline about the trouble she made. "Why did you ignore
my advice? I warned you that going with that young pot-head was
stupid, but you kept seeing him anyway. Now look what happened
because of your adolescent foolishness! You asked for my advice,
but you disregarded it! You still changed him! I don't know what
to do with you! Why can't you consider the long-term effects of
your actions?"
Emmeline couldn't answer him. Colin had never been so angry
with her before, and his scolding hurt like a slap.
But now, she knew Colin had been right.
She wished she could tell him so.
The horrible craving for blood returned now; it eclipsed every
other thought, and Emmy had to hunt again. She wandered through
Central Park, looking for unwary mortals.
Melvin Macklom made himself invisible and followed Emmy,
watching her, gloating over the copy he'd write if he ever returned
to his body.
Finally, a young man in a denim suit came around a corner. He
didn't see the small blonde teenager in the dark clothes, so he ran
into her and exclaimed, "Hey, watch out, kid!"
She said, "I'm sorry," then stared into his beautiful brown
eyes until he fell into a numbing trance and sat on a bench while
she prepared to bite his neck...
Melvin was appalled by the vampire-attack, but it was as
thrilling as a horror movie, to him. He decided to pay attention
so he could describe it accurately in his article.
But then a voice called, "Emily, Emily!" and an invisible
force carried her to Parkview Manor--minus her prey. It also
pulled Melvin back to that apartment, and he felt resentment at
being jerked around.

Back in 2020, at the hospital, Mr. Barnard Calhoun stood by
Melvin's unconscious form, while Cadwallader Wendel, Eric Cullens
and Mark Macklom watched. He evaluated Melvin's condition, then
said, "This looks like out-of-the-body travel. Mr. Macklom's
astral body has gone somewhere, leaving his physical body barely
alive. We must bring his astral body back here."
Looking sideways at Mr. Calhoun, A.K.A. Colin Barnard, Eric
asked him, "How can we do that?"
"If Mr. Macklom regains consciousness, it may bring Emmeline
back. That's the best way I know, and it doesn't involve sorcery."

The night of September 19, 1981, the Andersons stood in a
circle in the darkened living room again. Candles flickered, and
Dr. Saul Reidmoore recited his chant again. They jumped at the
abrupt reappearance by the two spirits, who regarded Dr. Reidmoore
with annoyance.
Dr. Reidmoore steepled his chubby fingers as he said, "Mrs.
Nash told us more about you, Emily. We understand your outrage
that the attacker escaped justice, but you are haunting the wrong
people."
"Wait a minute." Emmeline sighed and rolled her eyes a
little. "I told you before, I am not haunting them; they are only
sensing the emotions that were imprinted here when I was attacked.
I've heard that strong emotions like fear or anger can be recorded
in the electromagnetic fields of a place, like a tape recording.
So erase them with a magnet or degausser until you can't sense
them."
"Hm-m, that's an interesting concept. It might work."
Emily Barnard told Dr. Reidmoore, "That isn't all. You must
exorcize us."
"Are you certain? You still have not resolved your feelings
about your ordeal. You can't rest with unfinished business here."
Dr. Reidmoore sounded more like a counselor.
The girl sighed, "Oh, stop nagging me about that trouble."
"That attitude will slow your progress to the next level of
the spirit world."
"What's this tripe about levels? This isn't a video game!
You aren't a medium--you're an extra-large. You need running shoes
to get some real 'exorcize'."
Saul turned beet-red. "Well! You asked for it. Spirits,
begone! Go, never haunt this place again!"
Lightning blazed in the dark living room again. Emmeline's
glasses slid down, showing her frightened staring eyes; Melvin
stood like a shocked statue; then they were gone.

Mark stood by his brother's bedside, pleading, "Come on,
Melvin! Come back and talk to me again!" He was looking at his
brother when a foggy figure appeared, then entered the unconscious
body.
Melvin opened his eyes and whispered, "Where's Emmy? Didn't
she come back with me? She was right next to me when Reidmoore
exorcized us."

(END OF PART FOUR)

* * * * * * * *

A Lone Creation
A Poem By Elizabeth A. Reber

No one could understand
the workings of the inner mind.
Tender makings with strong words
build fortresses of fiction
on thin, paper sheets

Great writing, greater struggle
to capture the essence
the moment in time
fragile but impressionable.

What is yours is yours
that claim cannot be taken.
Only guesses are made
at the geniuses behind the mated words.

* * * * * * * *

The Return of Zorrothustra
A Short Story By Mike Allen

Something was wrong with the Universe.
Inside an ancient observatory perched like an insane penguin
atop Mount Everest, Yoshimatsu Jones bounded up the rickety stairs
to the Observation Platform, impeded only slightly by the balance
adjustments of his gyrosuit. Only seconds before, the
Radioactivity Readout went haywire, sketching surges in background
radiation that threw Spanky's cursor right off the screen. As the
observatory dome divided to unveil the night sky and the titanic
megascope swiveled to its proper angle, Jones bounced onto the
Platform, peered through the eyepiece...
Chaos ruled the heavens. Stars vanished from their posts and
reappeared elsewhere, as if Space itself folded and reconfigured.
He had just time to remote-program Spanky to record fotoprints
of the events, when--
A cry of "ho-Ha!" shook the galaxy to its core; then a shaft
of gas-fusion brilliance slashed across the star-riddled cosmos,
slicing a ragged run through the thin nylon fabric of space,
scratching a blazing Z of exploded atoms across the sphere of the
Constellations.
Her chains severed in the onslaught, Cassiopeia rose from her
dark nebulous bed, suddenly liberated from eons of stellar bondage.
When she stretched, she scattered thousands of the planets twirling
around her stars from one end of the galaxy to the other.
She blinked in drowsy bewilderment at her liberator: Drifting
along the leeward side of the galactic core, the celestial rogue
held his spiral arms in a defensive pose, wielding his
fusion-fueled rapier warily in front of his face.
"Mi amor, my hero," sighed Cassiopeia, patting her mouth
sleepily.
Then her eyes widened, two fright-induced star-matter
shockwaves expanding around them as she cried, "Se¤or, watch out!"
From behind the Big Dipper, Draco's massive comet-trail-scaled
head lashed out, red giant eyes flaring with fury.
Gracefully, the bandido turned to face Draco's wrath, poking
the point of his rapier in one flaring Draconic nostril.
Roaring loud enough to shatter Saturn's rings, Draco reared
back, billions of teeth glistening in his black maw like
flash-frozen gas giant shards as he furiously wriggled his smarting
snout.

Jones watched the unfolding catastrophe as if his eyes were
fused to the eyepiece. Zorro? The stars, comets, nebulae, the
very gravitational fields that held the galaxy together, the
substance of Space itself, conspiring to reproduce "The Mark of
Zorro"? And badly, at that?
A tremor nearly dislodged Jones from the Platform: the Earth
itself in cataclysm, responding to things awry in the galaxy. But
he hung on to his eyepiece, prayed that the megascope would not be
jarred out of alignment, and observed--

Cassiopeia's strange liberator stepped back a parsec and bowed
to his enemy. The gesture completely unveiled his face--or lack
thereof: A black hole blotted the space where his dashing features
should have been, letting no light through, not a single photon.
He made no sound, but something in the twinkling of the stars
clustered within him hinted at a smile beneath the mask.
Draco roared even louder, incensed at being mocked; then he
shouted: "Se¤or Coward, remove your mask! You break into my
bed-chamber, try to steal my lady-friend, and yet you no have the
guts to face me!"
"Your lady-friend!?!" Cassiopeia interjected. "We're not even
on speaking terms, you silly sadist--" Then, in mid-protest, she
stifled a yawn. Both hero and villain gave her sidelong looks.
"Your pardon, Se¤ores," she said, stretching again--as her
arms swept up, showers of comets flew wide, fizzling out in the
star-fields around her. "I've only just woken up." She flicked a
hand at them. "Go ahead."

Debris tumbled through the solar system, partly obscuring
Jones' view of the fray. But he didn't stop watching; neither did
he let the Earth's seismic seizures dislodge him from his
perch--the adjusters on his gyrosuit kept him in place.
He'd often postulated, always suspected that something like
this could happen, even a disaster of this magnitude, but to see
it, live it, truly believe...Could it be? Could this be the
definitive proof that the Galactic Mindless Metaconsciousness
really exists?
Jones stared slack-jawed through his megascope as all his
private theories of the workings of the Universe were confirmed.

Draco lunged, and the celestial highwayman back-pedaled,
causing a wave of stellar genocide as suns of all colors flew apart
in the gravity flux. The Great Serpent's neck snapped out to its
full length--
Draco gnashed his teeth, missing his target by a mere light
year.
The cosmic rogue breathed a short sigh of relief--a bright
patch of subatomic breath appeared upon his mask, where his mouth
should've been, then swirled into the gravity well and vanished.
He stepped back to regroup for his own attack, snagged his heel on
a stray flow of aether, and toppled.
Eyes rimmed with blazing solar flares, Draco arched through
the sky, overturning the Big Dipper, howling in delight as he
hovered over his prey, his great coils wound to strike.
"You, se¤or, are nothing but a disgrace. Did you think to
join the Zodiac or some such thing?" The dragon barked its mirth,
sending scores of planets tumbling. "Fat chance!" Then he
plunged, his jaw unhinging, rows and rows of glistening teeth
descending like a billion daggers--

Yoshimatsu's eyes narrowed, something exceptionally strange
catching his attention amidst the mayhem. What in the world--?
Something, a nebula perhaps, coalesced around Draco's hindquarters.
Concentrated its mass, brightened, whitened, shaped itself to look
like...boxer shorts?

For a moment, all the Heaven held its breath, as the
void-faced hero lay paralyzed beneath his descending destroyer.
Then, as the parsecs between them closed, thus spoke Zorrothustra:
"You know, se¤or,--"
In mid clause, the bandido tumbled forward, spinning between
Draco's spayed legs and striking upward.
"--you should be careful what you leave unmasked!"
Falling away in a spectacularly multi-hued aurora borealis
shower, Draco's cosmic undershorts vacated their post, landing in
a radioactive tangle around the dragon's feet.
The stars in his face shifted red with his embarrassment, and
the great celestial Dragon curled in on itself. Enveloping and
crushing whole systems of stars, he wrapped and knotted his great
coils in a mad scramble to yank his boxers back up.
The knotted coils began to shrink and tighten as gravity began
to take its course.
Draco, realizing how he'd been duped, poked his toothsome
snout out of the yarn-ball mass of his own body and howled: "You
don't fight fair, Se¤or Coward!"
The masked celestial highwayman hung his head, as if to say,
"I know." Then he dove out of the way as Draco's compressed mass
collapsed in on itself.

"I was right! I've been right all along!"
Despite himself, Jones could not help crying out with glee at
the sight through his telescope. The proof positive: The stuff of
the cosmos, arranging itself to set up a sight gag! Jones hoped,
for Posterity's sake, that Spanky was still recording fotos--
A cosmic-scale quake turned the world upside down, and Jones
plummeted from the Platform.
Once the shockwaves of the Great Serpent's demise dissipated,
the masked stranger picked himself up, brushed off the star-dust,
hung his rapier from his belt, and bowed to the beautiful
Cassiopeia. "Se¤orita, you are free from that assessino's evil
tyranny."
The lovely constellation glanced once, somewhat regretfully,
at her once comfortable nebulous prison, then drifted over to take
the stranger's proffered hand.
As the cheers of the universe wafted in on cosmic background
rays, she whispered, "Se¤or, I'm in your debt," and tried to look
into his eyes.
But his mask let not one photon through.
"Se¤or," she pleaded, "I don't mean to seem too bold, but this
is the twenty-third century, and...well, why do you wear a mask?
Is it some sort of closet alter-ego thing, or is it more like a
fetish?"
As an answer, the stranger lifted the singularity covering his
face just a little, and leaned forward meaning to place his lips on
hers.
The resounding shockwave as she slapped his face shattered
planets into asteroids. "Just answer my question, idiota! Don't
try that 'spoils to the victor' crapola on me!"
As an answer, the heavenly bandido smiled sadly, ruefully
rubbed the side of his face, and bowed to the glowering
Cassiopeia...then, with a "ha-Ho!', he cartwheeled out into the
star-filled night, whistling "When You Wish Upon a Star" as he
faded from sight.
With an exasperated "Hmmph!", Cassiopeia marched off to find
her niche in the new cosmic scene.

Cushioned by the gyrosuit, Jones landed on his feet--after
all, it wasn't the first time he'd fallen off the platform. As the
tremors subsided, he cursed. Certainly it was wonderful that he'd
survived, that the Earth had survived, that his observatory had
maintained its precarious perch.
But he'd missed the ending!
All the same, he'd seen all his secret astronomic theories
confirmed in ten catastrophic, badly-scripted minutes. But some
things had yet to be verified--
Without further ado, he dashed into the fotolab, where Spanky
the Computer had already generated all the fotos he needed to see.
Jones thumbed through the fotoprints three times, pausing only
once, to rake his gnarled fingers through his wispy goatee. Then
he grunted in satisfaction, nodding "I told you so" to no one in
particular. He fanned out the prints that confirmed his
suspicions, depicting an innocuous elliptical galaxy, one of those
that orbited the Milky Way, to o dim to be seen by mankind's naked
eyes, vanishing suddenly just before the cosmic Zorro's
melodramatic debut; once everything was over, there it was, back in
place, or as close as possible in the new stellar configuration.
Jones cupped his chin thoughtfully.
Then he tapped keys on Spanky's terminal, calling on the
Almighty Omniscient Memory Bank, accessing Twentieth Century
Trivia, summoning up dates: first, the decade that television
broadcasts began shooting at light speed into space; then,
specifically, the year, month and day the swashbuckling Zorro made
his TV debut.
Shutting Spanky down and producing a pen, Jones snatched a
sheet of paper adorned with a doodle of Mickey Mouse, and in the
space left over calculated how long it took for those television
broadcasts to completely saturate the galaxy.
Wide-eyed, he glared at the results at the end of his column
of figures.
There it was, his theory of the Galactic Mindless
Metaconsciousness, confirmed beyond any possible doubt. A smirk
warped the wrinkles of his face...then quickly faded.
Jones clambered out of the fotolab, and stared up past his
megascope, through the gaping crack in the observatory dome, at the
great glowing Z emblazoned across the sky. And an icy hand
finger-walked down his spine.
For Yoshimatsu Jones had a penchant for history--specifically,
twentieth century popular culture--and he knew what the television
broadcast studios of old had to offer the stars.
Wondering what the Mindless Metaconsciousness might take a
liking to next, he shuddered, suddenly freezing cold within the
comfy insulation of his gyrosuit.

T H E E N D

* * * * * * * *

The Kingmaker
A Multi-Universe Story By
D. Lynn Bivens, Kimberly Murphy-Smith, And Gerald James Seward

C O N C L U S I O N

[The Story So Far: F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper wakes up
from a deep sleep to find himself far away from his own Twin Peaks
in a mysterious room he does not recognize, hearing a voice refer
to him as "Number 3". He looks down to find his normal black suit
has disappeared and has been replaced with the same casual clothes
worn by Number Six in the 1960's TV series The Prisoner. Cooper
realizes the absurdity of his predicament but nevertheless presses
forward with an investigation of his circumstances, only to find he
is not the only outsider here. Joining him in a courtyard that
they all seemed to be led to are Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea's
Admiral Harriman Nelson, private detective Veronica Gaines (from
the POWER STAR stories "Twisted Web" and "Twisted Web 2:
Resurrection"), Star Wars' Luke Skywalker, Deep Space Nine's Major
Kira Nerys and Constable Odo, Space: 1999's Maya, Manimal's Dr.
Jonathan Chase, Captain Scarlet, Highlander Duncan MacLeod,
Superman, Greatest American Hero Ralph Hinkley, Star Trek's
Montgomery Scott, and Angus MacGyver. Mutual mistrust fills the
air of their first meeting--with Kira and Odo openly questioning
whether all of them are after the same goal and whether Cooper,
with his odd clothing, is really one of "them" or not--but all
eventually come to the realization that they are prisoners of a
power stronger than any of their individual powers and talents can
handle and that they are going to have to work together if they
want to get out. Deciding to return to their bungalows and gather
clues and anything else that might be helpful, the fourteen
outsiders vow to reconvene on the beach after sunset and put escape
plans into action. But they may be fighting more than just their
captors: Also finding themselves in a strange place are Star Wars'
Darth Vader, Dr. Doom, V's Diana, Terminator 2's T-1000, Lost In
Space's Robot, Buck Rogers' Twiki, and the Star Trek mirror
universe's Commander William Riker. "There is a game to be
played," Vader tells his companions. "We have all been brought
together to challenge the strongest forces of good in each of our
universes. And when we win, we shall return to our worlds--and
rule them triumphantly!" As the heroes discover that their captors
have left nothing to chance--even populating the waters off the
beach with Rovers, as in The Prisoner--all twenty-one outsiders
converge on the beach only to be informed by Number Two that they
have been led to this point. "You were all wrong--this is not a
game," Number Two tells them. "It is instead a quest--a quest that
will send you to the farthest corners of the earth. You are
seeking the greatest treasure anyone could ever find, an ancient
artifact from a dead planet called Sagar tens of thousands of
light-years from here. A brilliant blazing sword that has been
called many names over the years--the kingmaker, the sword of life,
Excalibur. Its real name in almost any language imaginable,
however, is the Power Star." As Number Two declares they will be
sent on teams to find the Power Star--with the one who finding it
gaining "Absolute Power over the entire universe and its many
alternates...for all time"--the heroes and villains start vanishing
in groups until only Scarlet and Duncan are left on the
beach...with a mysterious man wearing a badge with the number "6"
on it looking on from one of the caves before he decides to head
back to The Village and get to the bottom of this mystery.
Meanwhile, the others begin reappearing in their destinations where
they are supposed to start seeking the Power Star. Nelson and Kira
reappear on the deck of the seaQuest, where Darwin the talking
dolphin tellst them that everyone on the sub suddenly disappeared
and trouble is heading their way--trouble in the form of a small
attack craft piloted by the mirror Will Riker. Chase, Odo, and
Maya find themselves in the lobby of an elegant Manhattan office
building completely alone--until the T-1000 literally comes of the
woodwork and the two robots join him in attacking the trio of
metamorphs. Scotty and MacGyver find themselves in a deserted
village in Northern Ireland, where violence is a part of everyday
life--but not the violence of Dr. Doom and a laser blaster, who
takes potshots at them and forces the two creative engineers to
scrounge for parts to make a weapon. Luke and Cooper find
themselves in a South American jungle, sensing Vader's presence
nearby but unable to see him, and Luke must now trust the strength
of the Force he felt in Cooper and help him use that strength to
defeat Vader one last time. Veronica Gaines ends up alone on the
streets of L.A.--alone, that is, until the Visitor queen Diana
steps out of the shadows and challenges the tough detective to a
shootout. Superman and Ralph find themselves on the streets of
Metropolis, alone, with Ralph surmising that they've been sent
there to keep the others from having an unfair advantage by using
one of them with their super powers to find the Power Star, and to
pass the time, Superman offers to teach Ralph to fly. That leaves
only Scarlet and Duncan standing on the beach, and as Duncan points
his katana at the other man's throat, Scarlet asks why they haven't
disappeared. Duncan's eyes gleam as he answers, "All the others
are gone. It is only you and I, Scarlet. You and I are the last
two Immortals standing. You and I are all that is left in this
world. This is The Gathering."]

Overlooking the entirety of The Village was an ornate building
wherein the enigmatic and mysterious Number Two resided, forever
carrying out the insane works of some mysterious higher power.
Number Six had never been able to decide if there really was a
Number One or if some other conspiracy existed. But as he entered
the halls of Number Two's palace, watching The Great Eyes bobbing
and swaying on a gigantic rotating seesaw as they kept an
ever-vigil watch over The Village, he could sense something even
more amiss than usual. The wall of video screens was tuned to a
selection of chaotic battles between heroes and villains--the 21
people he'd seen on the beach, Number Six decided. These were not
scenes of The Village, not unless there was a jungle in the
interior that he'd never encountered, and he found himself at a
loss for what was going on.
"Look at them, Number Six."
Number Six looked behind him to find a young--teenaged?--woman
entering the room, reddish-blond hair swept back in a power
hairstyle that seemed to add to her intimidating demeanor. Her
number badge read "2". Whoever's in charge can't seem to keep
anyone in steady employment, Number Six found himself mentally
commenting in spite of himself.
"Look at them," Number Two indicated again, gesturing grandly
toward the screens. "Grand heroes, ruthless villains, all willing
to sacrifice themselves in an attempt to gain the mystical Power
Star. How truly heroic."
Number Six felt his heart sink. He himself had been here so
many years he'd lost track, and these were the first newcomers he'd
seen since he-couldn't-remember-when. And they were now merely
pawns in whatever game Number Two was playing. None of them were
in control of anything--the heroes were being heroic for something
meaningless; the villains' evil was being wasted on the whims of an
insane despot or whatever the feminine equivalent of that word was.
He watched the two military commanders, Major Kira and Admiral
Nelson, piloting the seaQuest like he'd never seen a submarine move
before, trying to outmaneuver the swifter attack craft helmed by
the one they called Will Riker. It was a struggle worthy of the
finest war movie, the finest epic adventure story, and he could not
shake the feeling it was all for naught.
His eyes riveted onto the images of the three shapeshifters
manipulating their molecules for all they were worth, with the
gelatinous one they called Odo tangled up with an equally-malleable
metallic being as their bodies occasionally tangled into a mess,
then uncoiled, then attacked again. He watched a man changing from
animal to man to animal again in less time than it took to take
several deep breaths as a small robot threw obstacles into his path
and attempted to knock him back. And he saw a woman change into a
creature he'd never seen before, something with huge arms and
spines and much power to take on the much larger robot attacking
her. And it was all meaningless, all a waste.
He saw the two engineers--Mr. Scott and Mr. MacGyver, he
thought he remembered--turning discarded pieces of metal and glass
and an odd-shaped pin into an explosvive projectile launcher,
managing to hold the armored Dr. Doom at bay, and realized their
efforts were futile because in the end Number Two would win anyway.
He saw the warrior they called Skywalker and the one they
called Cooper locked in a battle of titanic proportions with the
dark-clad Darth Vader--flashing swords of light, projectiles
seemingly moving of their own accord, incredibly agile
gymnastic-like movements--and felt a sense of sadness that such
goodness was wasted fighting such evil when the real evil was in
this room with him.
He watched as the beautiful black detective Veronica Gaines
stood gun-to-gun with the alien queen Diana on a deserted Los
Angeles street, each waiting for the other to twitch, wondering how
much carnage this Number Two would permit before finally getting
her fill of sadism.
He saw the two superbeings, the one called Superman and the
one called Ralph, on a deserted city street--he could swear it
looked like a real-life version of Metropolis from the Superman
comics--flying around, Ralph occasionally crashing to the ground or
into walls, and knew that they were just caged animals put there to
entertain Number Two.
And then there were the two men he'd seen left on the beach,
the one they called Captain Scarlet and the man who he'd heard
called "immortal", Duncan MacLeod, facing each other with Duncan's
sword at Scarlet's throat. Were these two heroes to destroy
themselves just to satisfy Number Two's bloodlust?
He turned to the woman behind him. "Why?" he asked, unable to
find any better words.
She shrugged. "Why not?" she replied.
He looked incensed. "That is not an answer."
"No, it's a question. And it's your job to find the answer."
Number Six sighed. There were certain things that never
changed. Number Two was still an enigma. And he was still asking
unanswerable questions.
But this time, he would find the answers.

"Duncan...think about it."
Duncan MacLeod's katana had not moved from Scarlet's neck
since the others had disappeared. This was The Gathering, it had
to be. Nothing else could explain being left alone with another
Immortal. So why was Scarlet not preparing to engage him in
battle?
Scarlet, on the other hand, had no desire to lose his
head--figuratively or literally. That meant he had to get through
somehow to Duncan. "Why would this be The Gathering?" he asked,
trying to keep his voice calm. "Do you truly believe you and I are
the last two Immortals left?"
"It's possible," Duncan responded.
"Even if one of us isn't really an Immortal?"
Duncan frowned. "What do you mean?"
"You're an Immortal. Were you born that way?"
"Of course."
"I was not."
Now Duncan looked curious. "You were not?"
"No." Scarlet gestured over himself. "This is a copy of my
original body. The last thing I remember before waking up like
this was my car spinning out of control. That was...well, that was
my first death."
"Yes, you said that earlier. And the...Mysterons? Is that
what you called them?...made this version of you?"
"Yes. I don't understand how--the only explanation the
boffins in Spectrum have for it all is that I must not have been
completely dead when they duplicated me, but the Mysterons have the
ability to duplicate any object or person as long as the object is
inanimate. So, they had to kill me, and then they made this copy.
When my friend killed me a second time to stop me from capturing
the World President, that was when I came to my senses."
"You still remember your first deaths?" Duncan now seemed
amused.
"Well, Idon't exactly remember them; I've been told what
happened. But yes, I remember most of the circumstances--except
for the six hours I was under Mysteron control."
"Youngster." Duncan put away his katana and seemed to smile
for the first time.
Scarlet breathed a sigh of relief. Then he looked insulted.
"I am not a youngster. I'm 32 years old."
"Child." Duncan laughed slightly. "You still measure time in
hours, days, years. Wait until you've been around 4 centuries and
your perspective will change dramatically."
Scarlet looked astonished. "Four centuries?"
"More or less. After a while the years all blend together.
Time has precious little meaning when death is not your enemy."
Scarlet looked somber. "That is what it's like to be
immortal." It was a statement, not a question.
Duncan nodded. "That is what it's like. If you think about
it for too long it will drive you insane."
"But if all Immortals are destined to kill each other..."
"...then you have to choose your friends carefully. That
usually means befriending mortals. And that means watching them
grow old and die while you live on. Even the ones you love."
Scarlet thought of his beloved Rhapsody Angel, once again
despairing of their ever being able to have a lasting relationship.
"Is it worth it?"
"It depends. My heart has been broken a number of times. But
that doesn't mean I stop losing it."
Scarlet nodded. "It's hard to avoid it."
Duncan actually found himself feeling sorry for the younger
man. But the circumstances of their meeting came back to him as he
looked around the beach. "So...if this is not The Gathering, what
are we doing here?"
Duncan's words brought Scarlet back to the present. "Number
Two would have you believe that we are here to find the Power
Star."
"I take it you don't believe him."
"I don't trust Number Two any farther than I can throw him.
There's something more here."
"Then why were we left here?"
"Perhaps Number Two was hoping you would reach the conclusion
you did--that this was The Gathering--and that we would fight to
the death and take each other out of the way."
"Ingenious. It almost worked. Now what?"
"I think we need to have a conversation with Number Two and
give him our opinions of his tactics."
"I like the way you think. Where should we start?"
Scarlet looked around. "It's unlikely Number Two is actually
anywhere in The Village...more than likely he's in something just
on the edge, a fortress..." He began looking around.
Duncan pointed off in the distance. "There--a light, on that
elevation."
Scarlet followed Duncan's gaze. "A likely candidate. We'll
split up once we reach it and attempt to find a way in."
"You realize, of course, this is most likely a suicide
mission."
Now Scarlet smiled. "Then who better to tackle it than an
Indestructible Man and an Immortal?"

"You're mad."
Number Two lolled in the odd oval chair that seemed to
completely engulf her and cast an amused gaze at Number Six, who
was still pacing about the room attempting to reason with her. No
wonder the previous Number Twos had taken such great pleasure in
tormenting Number Six--he was a worthy if amusing opponent.
"You realize, of course," Number Six continued, "that you are
as much a pawn as they are." He gestured at the wall of screens.
"To have these brave men and women battling whatever Evil you've
contacted or concocted seems purely self-serving to whatever secret
organization controls your actions."
"Do stand still, Number Six," she sighed wearily. "I am
trying to enjoy the show."
Number Six stopped his pacing, then grabbed an unoccupied
chair and hurled it at the images.
Instead of an explosion of phosphorus and glass, the chair
bounced harmlessly off the TVs, as if they were made of some
unbreakable alloy.
For a moment, Number Six was dumbfounded. Then he recovered
his composure and turned a stone-hard glare at the arrogant young
woman.
Number Two barely seemed fazed. "Feel better?"
"This cannot go on," Number Six stated angrily. "Whoever or
whatever these people are, they've no connection to secret
government organizations or conspiracies--and do not deserve to
suffer as part of whatever sick plan you and your controllers have
cooked up."
She gestured toward the screens. "Do they look like they are
suffering?"
Number Two looked back at the screens.
Kira and Admiral Nelson now seemed to be holding their own
against Riker, expertly avoiding the smaller sub's strikes.
Odo, Maya, and Chase were more than a match for T-1000 and the
two robots.
Scott and MacGyver had actually managed to fashion a crude
laser and other weapons to take on Dr. Doom and were winning the
battle.
Cooper and Skywalker were an effective team, acting in concert
as if they were of one mind, overwhelming even the powerful Darth
Vader.
Veronica Gaines seemed to be a much more accurate shot than
Diana, and the gunfight on the streets of L.A. now appeared much
more even than it had at first.
Superman and Ralph Hinkley seemed to be hitting it off
well--and Ralph was even starting to fly straighter.
And Duncan and Scarlet..."Where are they?" Number Six asked
aloud.
Number Two looked at the screen that had been chronicling
their adventures. "Impressive. I knew they would figure it out."
"Figure what out?"
"That they'd been had--that this was all a game. I'm quite
certain now they're heading this way to try and stop us."
"Us? But I've nothing to do with this!"
"Oh, really? Then why are you here?"
Number Six stopped. Why am I here? I came up to stop Number
Two, to try and save the newcomers...but they seem to be doing that
on their own. This is part of the plan--if the others find me here
they'll assume I was in on all of it. He started to leave.
The sounds of combat outside the compound stopped him. He
turned to Number Two.
"I knew they were the right ones to leave here," she said. "A
pair of ruthless, efficient killers who have no real fear of
death...yes, they were the right ones."
Number Two again turned to leave...only to be stopped by a
katana pointing right at the center of his chest.
"Don't move!" Duncan ordered.
The room's guards turned to fire on Duncan--only to be dropped
by a machine gun burst from behind.
Scarlet appeared from a side entrance, brandishing the
automatic weapon he'd taken from another of Number Two's guards
earlier. Both he and Duncan were covered in sweat and blood, their
clothes tattered in battle.
"Nice of you to finally join me," Duncan remarked
sarcastically.
"Who knew there'd be more guards in the catacombs than in the
main halls?" Scarlet retorted.
Number Six looked nervous. Duncan still had not moved his
katana. "Listen to me," he said. "I am not a part..."
"Quiet!" Duncan demanded. "I'm in no mood for any more of
your trickery, Number Two."
"I am not Number Two!"
"He's right," Scarlet interrupted. "It's the wrong voice."
He looked down at the man Duncan was addressing. "Where is Number
Two?"
"Right here," Number Two replied, standing up out of her
chair.
Scarlet whirled to face her. "A woman?"
"Yes. Do you have a problem with that?"
Scarlet recovered his composure. "No, I don't." He readied
the weapon and aimed it right at her. "And we've had quite enough
of your trickery, whoever you are. This game is at an end."
"I couldn't agree more."
As she finished speaking, a blinding flash filled the room.
When it cleared, Scarlet and Duncan found themselves unarmed...and
the other twelve heroes and heroines were standing with Duncan,
Scarlet, and Number Six.
Everyone looked completely confused. "What the devil...,"
Scotty began.
"Allow me to introduce myself," Number Two interrupted. "My
name is Amanda Rogers. I am a part of a superior race called the
Q Continuum. I'd been observing each of you in your own realities
for a very long time, and trying to convince another Q that there
were more superior creatures in other realities than the ones he
found so intriguing. He didn't believe me, so I devised this
little exercise to test your heroic tendencies."
"'Test'?" Odo was furious. "That's all this was--a test by
a Q?"
"I knew you wouldn't understand. It's very difficult to
explain what motivates a Q."
Cooper turned to Odo. "I take it you've encountered these Qs
before?" the Special Agent asked.
"That's what I meant when I said we were in big trouble," Kira
replied. "Qs have no morality. They don't care who or what they
hurt, as long as it keeps them from being bored. The last Q that
came through Deep Space Nine just stood by and watched his friend
nearly destroy our station." She turned to Amanda. "But you're
not the one who was with him--Vosh, I think her name was. You're
different. I've never met a female Q before."
"Q don't really have genders," Amanda explained. "They can be
anyone or anything they want to be." She gestured over herself.
"This is a kind of tribute to who I was. I'm part human and part
Q. It's a long story, best told at another time..."
"Where are the others?" Superman demanded. "Where are the
villains we were fighting? Were they part of your test?"
"Well, they were added by my friend. He said heroism is more
difficult to demonstrate when you're fighting for survival. I told
him he was wrong. And he was, as it turned out, as demonstrated by
Mr. MacLeod and Captain Scarlet seeing through the whole thing and
fighting their way up here. No doubt they've all been sent back to
their respective realms, completely unaware that anything ever
happened...except for Darth Vader, of course."
"He's still around?" Superman asked.
"No, he's gone," Luke said confidently. "But they couldn't
influence his mind so that he would forget what happened because of
the strength of The Dark Side within him."
"Exactly," Amanda replied. "I tried to warn my friend, but of
course he wouldn't listen. He's like that. And I won't be able to
make you forget either, Mr. Skywalker, because of the strength of
The Force within you. The Jedi mind is among the strongest I have
ever encountered."
A newfound respect for Luke spread among the others. Luke
blushed slightly. "What about Cooper?" he asked.
"Ah, yes, Mr. Cooper, the powerful clarvoyant. Many an enemy
have tried to break through the fortress walls of his mind. I'm
impressed that you were able to get through, Mr. Skywalker." She
turned to Cooper. "You'll find yourself a lot stronger for this
experience, Mr. Cooper. I can't possibly remove every element of
experience from your mind. But I can certainly give it a good
shot. You'll find yourself with snatches of memories you can't
quite place, as if you'd had one of your clarvoyant dreams. And
you can thank Mr. Skywalker for unlocking the reservoir of
strength within you."
Cooper looked at Amanda intensely. "You seem confident in
your powers. Are all Q like you?"
"Some are more arrogant than others."
"Like the one who spoke to us when we were brought here.
Where is he?"
"It could have been her," Chase pointed out. "She did say a
Q could be anyone or anything..."
"We can," Amanda replied, "but Mr. Cooper's right. It was
not I who spoke to you earlier. That was my opponent in this
little contest. Q?"
In a flash, another man stood beside her. Arrogance exuded
from every pore of his being and etched itself into his expression.
"Q," Odo growled.
"I knew you were behind all this," Kira hissed.
"Moi?" Q looked offended. "Major Kira, you wound me. This
wasn't my idea."
"That's right," Amanda replied. "It was mine. All of it."
"Most of it," Q corrected.
"For pity's sake," Scotty interrupted, "why? What were
y'trying t'prove?"
"Nothing," Amanda answered. "At least, nothing that would
make any sense to you. But Q and his ilk have to be reminded every
now and again that they will never completely understand humanity.
I was trying to explain the concept of heroism and how important it
is to human and humanoid history. Indeed, heroism is a part of the
humanoid condition on other worlds and in galaxies far, far away.
It is exhibited by man and woman alike, mortal and immortal...even
indestructible men."
Scarlet and Duncan acknowledged the references with knowing
glances.
"The Q have trouble that such abstract concepts can be present
in flawed beings," Amanda continued.
"Not I," Q interrupted. "I have seen enough humans to know
that heroism, however primitive its form, is indeed exhibited by
them. And I am impressed at their feeble attempts to progress
despite their flaws."
"Too bad you've never seen fit to show your appreciation," Odo
harrumphed.
"Harsh words from a changling from the race of the so-called
'Founders'," Q chastised.
If Odo could have blushed, he would have. Instead, he fixed
hard, angry eyes on Q, the same kind of angry glare he usually
reserved for lawbreakers aboard Deep Space Nine.
"Let me guess," Duncan said, trying to get the discussion back
on track. "If this was just a way to demonstrate heroism to the
other Q, then the mythical Power Star..."
"...never really existed," Q admitted.
An angry murmur arose among the others.
"But your quest was a genuine one," Amanda quickly pointed
out. "A quest against evil."
"We risked our lives for that sword," Nelson said with barely
controlled anger, "and now you tell us it never existed?"
"You're immoral!" Maya burst.
"They're amoral," Ralph corrected. "Immoral implies they
actually have a moral code. I've seen nothing to suggest that they
do."
Q looked bored. "All right, all right, if it'll make you
happy..." He snapped his fingers.
Before them appeared a huge glistening, gleaming sword. Its
hilt gleamed with precious gems and fine metals; its blade was
sharpened to a razor's edge and polished to the point of almost
glowing. It certainly seemed that whoever took physical possession
of it could somehow exert their will over the world for Good or
Evil.
"The Power Star," Q said, mocking the grand tones of an
announcer. "An ancient artifact from a dead planet called Sagar
tens of thousands of light-years from here. A brilliant blazing
sword that has been called many names over the years--the
kingmaker, the sword of life, Excalibur..."
"Send it back," MacGyver interrupted.
"Yeah," Veronica said, making a face. "Get rid of it. I
don't want anything to do with it."
"Are you sure?" Q offered. "It really does have all the
powers promised--I put them there myself..."
"Get that thing out of here," Cooper ordered firmly.
Q rolled his eyes, then snapped his fingers again.
The Power Star vanished.
"Told you they wouldn't be tempted by it," Amanda taunted.
"Don't rub it in," Q snarled.
"Are you two finished?" Cooper interrupted.
"I've accomplished all I wanted to prove," Amanda answered.
"Good. Then send us back. None of us belong here. And all
of us have someone or something to go home to."
Q sighed exasperatedly. "And I had so wanted to have some tea
brought in. Oh, well."
In the snap of the fingers and the blink of an eye, the
fourteen heroes and heroines vanished, leaving only Number Six and
the two Qs in Number Two's grand room.
"You're a sore loser," Amanda remarked.
"And you're a sore winner," Q retorted.
"What is the meaning of all this?" Number Six demanded. "What
kind of trick have you and your sick counterparts concocted this
time? How were you able to do all this?"
"We forgot about him," Amanda said, gesturing to Number Six.
"He's certainly tightly wound," Q commented condescendingly.
"Well, he should be. Number Six has been here so many years
I doubt he even remembers his real name. He's been the bane of
Number Twos ever since he was brought here after resigning from
being a secret agent man. They've been trying a wide variety of
mind control to break him ever since. And every one of their
efforts have failed. Now this, Q, is a true example of heroism at
work."
"If he's so heroic, why can't he break free of his captors?"
"Because they never claim to have control over anything. That
makes them the most dangerous kind of unseen power there is. The
Q Continuum would like them."
"I have had enough of your coded dialogue and answerless
answers," Number Six snapped. "I want an answer, and I want it
now!"
"All right, all right," Q sighed. "No."
"'No'? What kind of answer is that?"
"The only one we can give." With that, Q gestured
dramatically.

Suddenly, Number Six was alone again. And he was no longer in
Number Two's palace. He was back in the same apartment he'd been
dumped into all those many years ago when he'd first arrived.
"No!" he shouted, finally understanding Q's answer.
In the distance, he thought he could hear a taunting female
voice saying told you he wouldn't take it well.

Cooper awoke with a start, as if shaken out of a dream. He
sat up in bed and looked around frantically, his mind filled with
images he could not understand and fragments of dialogue that made
no sense. He fought to clear his mind and get his bearings.
This was his room. His bed. His house. His clothes. It had
all been a dream. Or had it?
What happened? Cooper struggled to piece together the odd
snatches of memory floating through his mind. It was certainly
among the more vivid dreams he'd ever had--why couldn't he remember
more of it?
Cooper reached over to his bedside table and picked up his
microcassette recorder, then pressed the "RECORD" button. "Diane,"
he said into it, "Remind me to ask you to place me under hypnotic
regression as soon as possible. I have just had the oddest dream
that I am certain is crucial to remember, and yet I cannot recall
enough of it for any of it to make sense..."
Two trenchcoated figures burst into his bedroom, guns drawn,
aimed straight at him. Both the tall brown-haired man and the
smaller red-haired woman in his doorway looked astonished to see
him.
"I'll tell you more about it later." Cooper switched off his
recorder and raised his hands. "Don't shoot--I'm not armed."
The man recovered his composure first. "Special Agent Dale
Cooper?" he asked.
"Yes," Cooper answered.
The man nodded to the woman, and they put their guns away and
reached for their badges. "I'm Special Agent Fox Mulder," the man
replied. "This is Agent Dana Scully. We'd like to ask you a few
questions about your recent disappearance..."

T H E E N D

* * * * * * * *

He was brought across in 1228. Preyed on humans for their blood.
Now, he wants to be mortal again, to repay society for his sins, to
emerge from his World of Darkness, from his endless forever
night...

Rogue
A Forever Knight Short Story
By D. Lynn Bivens And Gerald James Seward

C O N C L U S I O N

[The Story So Far: Ancient female vampire Vorakar believes
that Dr. Natalie Lambert's knowledge of their species is a danger
to their existence and must be destroyed. Their leader, Aristole,
tries to reason with her, but Vorakar appeals to the younger
vampires among them: "It is time to rid ourselves of this 'New
Age' for vampires and return to the old!...And any who oppose
us...should be destroyed!" she declares, then kills Aristole and
asserts her authority as the new leader by declaring Nick Knight a
"rogue" and dispatching The Enforcers to destroy Natalie. But
Vorakar has a hidden agenda: She was once Nick's lover who is
jealous of his new relationship with Natalie...and Nick's vampiric
clairvoyance warns him that his ex-lover is now after Natalie, whom
he knows is working late in her lab. He hurries to protect
Natalie, convincing Schanke to wait downstairs for him, and arrives
just in time, for the Enforcers have killed a lobby guard and are
stalking Natalie in her lab. Schanke, meanwhile, calls for backup,
and as he and an older officer head up to Natalie's lab, the
younger officer patrols the staircase and gets attacked by the
Enforcers. Nick spots one coming off the elevator and fires
dead-on at the vampire--who turns out to be an illusion. "Jesus,
Nick--what do you think you're doing?" Schanke says, in shock at
his partner's cold-blooded assassination of a cop, as Nick suddenly
realizes how deep Vorakar's plan ran. "It's all a set-up!" he
shouts furiously....]

Officer Pattie Malone was usually bored beyond belief whenever
pulling a night shift as a dispatcher for the Toronto police.
Sure, there were murders, robberies, break-ins, and domestic
disturbances, but it was always the same. Nothing unusual,
spectacular, or surprising. Just one boring, routine call after
another.
Until tonight.
"Det. Schanke to Dispatch, come in!" the sideburned
detective's voice exclaimed over the headset which was mashing
Pattie's hairdo and pinching her ears.
"This is Dispatch, Schanke, what's the trouble? You sound as
if the Devil himself's facing you down."
Pattie's good-natured taunt was lost on the still-excitable
Toronto cop. "I wish to Hell that was it, Pattie. Nick's just
gunned down a fellow officer."
As Patti Malone sat stunned at her station, Schanke's voice
continued. "And he's taken Natalie Lambert hostage from the
Municipal Building! He's probably already in his Caddy barrelling
along like a wild man. Get everything you've got headin' into this
sector. Now!"
Before further statements or questions could be uttered by
Pattie, the partner of the man on the run turned off the
walkie-talkie radio he'd used from an upper floor of the Municipal
Building.
"All units, converge on the Municipal Building," she said
professionally into her headset's microphone stem. "See Det.
Schanke. Probable homicide involving Det. Nick Knight. Det.
Knight is armed and has a hostage. Approach with extreme caution.
Repeat..."

The incredible report crackled over police radios for miles
around, and two officers who were within minutes of the scene as
they suppressed obvious shock over such an impossible turn of
events. "Nick Knight? A murderer?" the driver of the police
cruiser asked incredulously.
Officer Stearns shared his partner's disbelief as he tugged at
his shoulder harness and sighed, "Better step on it, Burgin; I'd
hate to see some trigger-happy rookie blowin' Knight away without
first finding out what this nonsense is all about."
As Stearns snapped on the flashing lights and screaming siren,
Burgin slammed the sole of his shoe against the acceleration pedal
with a bit more emotional impact than needed. Once, Det. Knight
had helped his younger brother get help for a problem that had
become all too common amongst a generation seeking purpose in an
increasingly impersonal and compassionless society. Unable to hold
down a decent job and equally incapable of qualifying for the
Toronto Police Academy, Jeremy Burgin--the youngest of four
children born into a traditionally police-oriented family--fell
into the easy escape provided by various drugs purchased with
ridiculous ease on some Toronto streets.
For months, Jeremy drifted deeper and deeper into the
psychological abyss created so readily by illicit drugs. His
search for some means of employment melted away and along with it,
any hope of ever returning to some semblance of normalcy so prized
by his father, a retired police chief, and his police officer
brother.
Jeremy was hopelessly lost--and hopelessly addicted.
Unfortunately--but not at all unexpectedly--Jeremy Burgin had
to allow himself to fall into the next trap so prevalent with drug
users: He became a small-time drug dealer in order to support his
relentless thirst for frequent fixes. Not being a born criminal or
involving himself with quick money schemes or the Syndicate, Jeremy
didn't stay in drug dealing for long before a raid at the
roach-infested motel wherein he had set up business thrust the
hapless lad into the final trap awaiting anyone foolish enough to
turn to drugs as a replacement for reality: Jail.
It was during the booking process that Nick Knight learned of
Jeremy's troubled downturn--even before Burgin himself had been
notified. Nick somehow persuaded the arresting officers and D.A.
reps to release the young man into Knight's custody. Burgin had
always wondered how this was accomplished and was still somewhat
suspicious of the manner in which Nick jokingly stated he had
"hypnotized them all."
At any rate, Nick--who had been rumored to have once sought
professional help himself for some sort of drinking problem--saved
Jeremy from prison, brought his addiction to his family's
attention, and thus made it possible for the youth to receive help
and literally turn his life around. Jeremy was now helping others
with addictions as both a guest lecturer at college substance abuse
classes and a moderately-paid social worker for the city of
Toronto.
So, naturally, Officer Burgin felt honor-bound to--
"Burgin! Watch out!"
No sooner had his partner shouted than Burgin snapped out of
his appreciative reverie just in time to avoid rear-ending a
Mercedes that stopped at the approach of the police car with lights
and sirens shattering the night.
"Sorry," panted the policeman behind the wheel, as sweat
started streaming down his sullen features.
"Sorry?" parroted his partner patronizingly. "Ya know, maybe
this week wasn't the best one for you to switch to decaf."
"Yeah," heaved Burgin, "and something tells me it was an even
worse week to quit smoking."

Outside the Municipal Building, coroners' vehicles were parked
haphazardly before the building's main entrance, as bodybags were
brought out in a horrific parade of tragedy. Schanke stood
anxiously at the curb, awaiting the arrival of virtually every
cruiser and unmarked sedan in the city. A respected cop like Nick
Knight suddenly turning bad had a way of mobilizing the Toronto
P.D. into immediate action.
"C'mon, dammit, he's gettin' away," murmured Schanke to
himself as the realization of how well Nick could cut through
nighttime traffic tugged at his forethoughts.
Friend or not, Knight would have to be brought in to stand
trial and Schanke wanted to be the one to do it.
Suddenly, a shrill screech caught his attention as Officers
Burgin and Stearns slid to a stop next to him.
"What's the story, Detective?"
Schanke ignored Burgin's earnest and straightforward question
and rushed to climb into the back seat of the black-and-white.
"About freakin' time one o' you uniforms showed up. Nick could be
on the other side of town by now." Slamming the rear door shut and
leaning forward fretfully, Schanke instructed, "Move it!"

"My God, Nick, slow down before you kill us!"
Natalie held onto the dashboard for dear life as the '62
Cadillac careened in and out of the spaces between cars in both
directions. Then she rethought the absurdity of that statement.
"Uh, before you kill me, anyway."
"You don't get it, do you, Natalie?" Nick shouted almost
angrily above the blare of car horns. "Vorakar's set me
up...turned my own fellow police against me. All the while, the
Enforcers will be watching and waiting."
Natalie considered what was said and suddenly understood the
doubly diabolical plan of that vampire queen. "A diversion.
That's what this is about, isn't it? Vorakar wants you to be so
concerned about your fellow police chasing you, you wouldn't be
able to sense the closeness of the Enforcers."
"Exactly."
Natalie, looking to lighten a very frightening situation,
shrugged. "Guess some women can't take 'no' for an answer."
Nick shot her an amused glance, smiling slightly, then
returned his attention to the high-speed getaway through Toronto
streets. If not for his superhuman reflexes and senses, the Caddy
would have already ended up as so much wreckage in the midst of the
bustling city. "You know what I hate most about all this, Nat?" he
contemplated aloud.
"What's that?"
"Poor Schanke's heading up the posse that's after me now. He
must be ready to explode."

"Faster, faster!"
Schanke pressed his own right foot to the floor of the back
seat, as if he could control the accelerator from there and propel
them faster down the streets. "Where'd you learn to drive? The
'Miss Daisy School for Police Officers'?" he continued impatiently.
"Hey, I'm just as anxious to get to Nick first as you are,
Det. Schanke," Burgin respectfully chided. "But as far as we know,
he's miles away in God knows which direction!"
With a knowing smirk, Schanky only replied, "Don't worry. I
got it covered."

From high above the Toronto skyline, a brilliant illuminating
beam blinded Natalie and Nick as the peripatetic duo sped along the
avenues criss-crossing the city. "Police helicopter," growled Nick
with no surprise in his tense voice. "I wondered how long it'd be
before they got into the act."
"The patrol cars will know precisely where we are and where
we're heading," Natalie lamented while squinting up at the blinding
light around the still-speeding '62 Caddy. "We're as good as
caught."
"Not if we use an alternate mode of transportation."
Natalie eyed Nick curiously and asked, "What alternate mode?"

"...heading west towards main highways leading out of Metro
area at what appears to be 95 m.p.h."
Schanke's jaw became set and his teeth clenched tightly as the
chopper pilot's static-ridden transmission finished. "All right,
now we've got him."
"How do ya figure that, Schanke?" Stearns asked somewhat
sarcastically--he never was a fan of the loud and unruly detective.
"Because I know Nick," snapped Schanke. "He's not going to
make a bad situation worse by crossing Toronto's lines. My guess
would be he and Natalie'll bail out near the on-ramp of the
highway. And he sure won't get far on foot!"

"Hey," the chopper pilot puzzled into his headset's microphone
while circling several hundred feet above the highway in question,
"somethin's goin' on down there. He's pulled his car underneath
the overpass near the on-ramp. He's prob'ly bailin', but I can't
get a good enough look."
"Just keep him in sight," Schanke's voice stated over the
earphones of the headset. "I don't think Nick's gonna hang around
too long under that overpass. He'll be makin' tracks any minute.
Be ready..."
"Don't worry, Detective," the pilot proclaimed with a prideful
grin. "No matter where he goes on foot, I'll be on him like stink
on--Hey!"

Static screamed from the patrol cruiser's two-way, as Schanke
shouted into the microphone, "What the Hell's happening up there?"
Another unnerving burst of static made Schanke agitatedly
reiterate, "What's goin' on?"
"I-I'm not sure," an obviously shaken helicopter pilot
stammered from the small speakers. "I-it looked as if s-somebody
flew past me!"
Schanke's puzzled scown was instantly shared by the other
officer as they silently pondered the possibility that the pilot's
sanity was in serious question.

The pilot, in fact, questioned it himself.
"I could've sworn..."
All that surrounded the hovering helicopter was a ravenous
darkness interrupted periodically by the dozens of lights dotting
the outlines of Toronto. If something did swoop past his craft as
it "schooped" the air, the night had long since swallowed it whole.

"Nick, put me down this instant!"
Natalie was not amused by her current predicament and glanced
up worriedly as she clung to her vampire companion who glided along
via metaphysical means. "If I want to take a little night flight
above the city, I'll rent a private plane!" she quipped, trying not
to anger the only thing standing between her and the ground.
"Calm down," Nick growled slightly as his features took on a
vampiric appearance while he used his supernatural power. "You
can't fall...unless I wish it."
Attempting to alleviate a little of the tension sweeping
through her trembling body, Natalie quipped, "Uh, have I told you
how much I like you, Nick?"
The vampire-cop would have smiled in mild amusement...if such
were part-and-parcel of the fanged transfiguration into which he
had temporarily metamorphosed.
"W-where are we going, anyway?" Natalie glanced down at the
darkness-enshrouded ground hundreds of feet below them, and
flinched as she clinched her eyes as tightly as humanly possible,
as if to somehow dispel the sensation of soaring through the night
air.
"Back to my apartment," Nick acknowledged in a low tone. "It
would be the last place Schanke would think to look."
"And the Enforcers?"
Nick's fangs flashed in the moonlight, and his eyes glowed
eerily. "I expect we'll know soon enough, Natalie."

"Vorakar, the Young Ones hunger for the hunt."
One of the anarchy-bound assistants to the new leader of the
vampiric community approached his queen with caution and attempted
to warn her of the growing discontent. "That is why they stood
behind your plans to dispatch Aristole. Why are we kept waiting?"
"I told you, you fool, the Hunt will recommence the moment
Nicholi and his human female are destroyed," Vorakar answered with
a snarl as saliva gleamed on her bared fangs and a centuries old
hatred burned in her satanically-shining eyes. "And that glorious
moment is drawing very near."
As the voracious rabble of bloodsuckers stirred and argued
amongst those older members who opposed the resurrection of the
hunt, another aide with an attitude more akin to an heir apparent
was quick to interject, "They are the next wave of vampirism,
Vorakar, and they are ready! We should delay no longer!"
As rage grew in her already malevolent face, Vorakar hissed
sinisterly and lashed out at the lesser vampire with razor-sharp
claws, before those who witnessed her war-like assault could so
much as gasp.
With the opinionated aide's head swiftly severed from an
undead body, he collapsed into a veritable lake of blackish blood.
The immorally immortal life he'd maintained for slightly longer
than a century was now sent to whatever Hell awaited it.
"I will not be questioned!" she shouted for all to hear,
instantly silencing the buzz of arguing amongst the members and
striking a searing fear into her aides. "And I shall not be
deprived of my revenge against Nick Knight."

With virtually every available patrol car and unmarked in
Toronto converging upon the spot where Nick and Natalie had
abandoned his prized possession, it was little wonder that Det.
Schanke was highly irritated by the copper pilot's report.
"Whaddya mean 'They never left this area on foot'? We've got a
hundred cops down here with the ditched Caddie, and they're nowhere
in sight! Not even footprints on the grassy embankment! So
what're you sayin' they did? Disappeared like ghosts? Or maybe
they flew away like eagles or somethin', huh?" Schanke's staticky
voice finished in the earphones of the embarrassed officer still
circling above the on-ramp that was now literally teeming with
uniformed and plainclothed policemen.
For a split-second he hesitated and recalled a brief glimpse
of "something big" swooping past him...but dismissed the idea as
ludicrous. "Sorry, Detective," the pilot apologized via two-way
transmission, "but they couldn't have gotten far."

Schanke groaned. Incompetance always did drive him mad.
"Well, make a complete pass over the area," he exasperatedly
instructed over his walkie-talkie, "one kilometer square. If
they're still on foot, you oughta spot 'em." Switching off his
radio and slipping it into the pocket of his sports coat, the
sideburned detective joined some colleagues and sighed, "Might as
well holster the guns...he's not gonna pop out on us."
As the officers and plainclothes responded, Schanke cautiously
added, "But if he does...don't shoot!"
Schanke stepped off to himself, slipped a cigarette into his
lips--he just couldn't seem to keep his promise to quit--and stared
up at the helicopter slowly searching the surrounding landscape
with its ultra-bright spotlights. "Nick," he murmured to himself
as he lit the cigarette with a Zippo lighter, "whatever else you do
tonight...please don't try to challenge any trigger-happy cops.
I'd hate to be a pall-bearer in this suit!"

The door to Nick's apartment swung inward as he and Natalie
hurried in, then locked and bolted the door behind them. "Jesus,
Nick," complained a nervously shivering Natalie as she strode to
the center of the semi-darkened room, "I don't think coming back
here was the smartest plan."
"Of course it is," Nick--now transformed back to human--stated
succinctly as he raced toward his refrigerator. "This would be the
last place they'd look for us. We're way across town...too far to
have walked in such a short time."
"I wasn't thinking about Schanke and the cops," she tersely
stressed with fear radiating from her fragile features.
Stopping short of turning toward her, Nick understood her
meaning and could only offer, "I don't sense the Enforcers,
Natalie. They haven't tracked us here."
"Not yet."
Nick couldn't honestly dispute her reasoning and worry, as the
Weakness worked its way through his centuries-old body, bringing
with it a hunger only sated by one specific fluid.
Nick opened the refrigerator door and allowed its dull light
to spill out, making visible the contents consisting of
non-descript wine bottles filled with a dark red liquid. Some were
full, some were not.
Natalie knew what liquid they carried inside their glass
shells. And it made her shudder.
"I'm sorry," apologized the heroic vampire cop as he took a
half-empty bottle from inside. "I must replenish my strength, if
I'm going to protect you from the Enforcers."
Natalie nodded and looked away as Nick thirstily drank from
the bottle of blood, a faint expression of self-disgust briefly
forming on his handsome face.
But already the blood was rebuilding his strength, his
stamina, his supernatural senses.
Another swig followed the first...a little longer and with a
lot less distaste.
Natalie glanced back--more out of morbid curiosity than
anything else--and was sickly fascinated by how someone so
seemingly normal could indulge in such a monstrous ritual of
sustenance. If only she could discover a cure, Nick Knight's
refrigerator would instead be stocked with beer and cold cuts and
cheese and letuce and tomatoes and fruit and soft drinks...and real
bottles of wine.
Having consumed over two-thirds of the chilled blood, Nick
popped the cork back in and returned the bottle to its place beside
its frost-coated companions, shutting the refrigerator door, with
remorse and shame hanging in the air between him and a human female
for whom he cared a great deal.
"Natalie," he started as he slowly walked toward her in the
slightly sinister shadows cast by the night. "Natalie, I'm
sorry...but it's as I've said: I'll need my strength, if either of
us is to survive Vorakar's plot."
"I know," she answered softly as Nick came closer and their
eyes hypnotically locked on one another. "I've long since accepted
what you are, Nick. You know that. It's just...sometimes..."
Now within reach of her, Nick gently touched his forefinger
against her pouting lips while making a soft shushing sound, still
staring intently and intimately into her eyes. "No need to
explain. I understand...in more ways than you could imagine. I do
detest what I am...what I must ingest to exist. But there is one
thing I don't regret about my condition."
A lingering silence accented the next words Nick Knight would
utter...words Natalie Lambert had hoped to hear.
"It made it possible...for us to meet."
Natalie did not reply. She did not have to. Nick could read
it, no doubt, in her expressions, if not in her thoughts.
Slowly, fluidly, their faces drifted toward one another.
Their mouths, slightly parted, were preparing for the inevitable:
A kiss.

Outside the main entrance to the building wherein Nick Knight
resided--and where he and Natalie were at that very moment--two
dark individuals stood deathly-still underneath the full moon,
staring up toward Nick's floor as if seeing the two occupants of
his apartment at that precise instant.
Two would-be muggers happened upon the scene, mistakenly
perceiving the two as "easy marks" or out-of-towners. They would
pay dearly for such misconceptions.
"Hey, huh, how 'bout handin' over some cash," one said as he
nimbly flipped open a Butterfly knife with three sharp motions,
"'fore we hand over your freakin' hearts?"
The two strangers jerked their horrid heads to face the
careless criminals, fangs bared...satanic eyes burning...
"What the Hell?"
It would be the last question ever asked by either young thug
as the Enforcers dispatched them with ridiculous ease, and
voraciously siphoned off their lives' liquid like half-starved
predators in the blackened bowels of the primordial jungle.

"They're here!"
The suddenness of such a reversal of emotional
expression--from tender seductiveness to battle-ready
wariness--took a still-mesmerized Natalie by surprise. "W-what?"
"Enforcers," snarled Nick Knight, having already transfigured
himself back into the terrifying features of a vampire. "They've
tracked us here. They'll be at the door in a matter of moments."
"Enforcers," she muttered in remembrance of the murderous
reason for fleeing via their land and air escape a few minutes
earlier...the fear returning with such force as to erase the
singular bliss she had shared with Nick, when they shared such a
lingering kiss seconds before.
But the erasure because of fear would not last. In fact, this
would be one of the most cherished memory of Natalie Lambert's
life, and would remain so until its inevitable end.
Of course, if the Enforcers were to succeed in their satanic
mission, Natalie realized, that end could come the very same day.
"What're we gonna do, Nick?" she asked in short breaths while
looking around the loft apartment. "Where can we hide that they
couldn't find us?"
Nick turned his horrific fanged features toward Natalie and
spoke in a sinister whisper that sent icy shivers down her spine,
as if she had just stepped into the refrigerated room of the city's
morgue--which was not so far from being an apt analogy. "I have an
idea, Natalie, but it'll depend on your courage. You can show no
fear."
Natalie swallowed the dry lump seemingly lodged in her throat
and nervously answered with a single statement, "O.K.--What do you
want me to do?"
His fangs still glistening and his eyes still glowing with a
self-luminosity borne of a centuries-old curse, Nick quickly
stepped toward an oaken end-table and smashed it into several large
pieces, picking out two board-like sections about a half-meter in
length.
Natalie felt fear suddenly constricting her throat all over
again, as Nick eyed her very strangely.

Graveyard fog flowed across the hallway floor before the door
to Nick Knight's humble abode overlooking some of Toronto's
streets. Forming out of the mist like sinister spectres were the
two vampiric Enforcers of the Code.
"RRRR!"
--krak-CRASH!--
The door broke easily under the combined vampiric might of
creatures foresworn to uphold the laws of their community of
undead. It splintered into large clumps of wood now lying on the
loft's floor like an upended puzzle, the metal locks and bolts
dangling from the remaining frame. The Enforcers had arrived to
carry out Vorakar's commands.
"Come in," quipped a vampiric Nick standing stoically in the
center of the spacious apartment. "Door's open. If I knew you
were coming, I would've ordered a couple of stakes for dinner."
Unable to appreciate sarcastic humor any more, the Enforcers
only scanned the spartan surroundings and snarled, "Where's the
woman?"
Nick continued his concentrated effort to so distract and
disorient the two terrifying individuals, that they would be unable
to focus their supernatural senses and pinpoint her position.
"What's the matter? Afraid she's going to jump out with a bucket
of holy water or something? I'm the one you should be concerned
with...not a mere human female."
The Enforcers almost laughed at Nick's seeming attempt at
bravery in the faces of beings who had protected the Community's
Code for uncounted hundreds of years, without even one failure.
"You present no problem to us, Nicholi. You would be only a
momentary amusement. We should have dispatched you in the 1800s,
after we disposed of that Civil War photographer."
As Nick fought against such an unpleasant flashback regarding
his brief-but-bloody stint in the Union's military, he said, "You
may have found me more of a problem than you think."
This time an evil chuckle did rattle from the throats of the
Enforcers. "Your fear was as palpable then as it is at this very
instant."
The other snarling, salivating Enforcer pulled a sharpened
wooden stake from somewhere inside his coat. The dire implications
of its intended use--and its target--were not lost on Nick Knight.
"Don't you hear them?" he asked as he stared unblinkingly into
their equally shining eyes, exerting all his hypnotic powers into
one intensely concentrated assault upon the egotistic psyches of
the Enforcers.
"What...what are you talking about, Rogue?"
"The voices of all those whose existences you've ended, whose
blood you've spilt...both human and vampire. Hear them? Bemoaning
their bereavement from the succession of centuries you have soiled.
Hear them? Wailing their lamentations for being so brutally and
arbitrarily cut short by unfeeling, uncaring creatures of the Code.
Hear them now? They're crying out for revenge from the long-lost
centuries of unjust persecution by their own kind!"
Though extremely strong by even vampire standards--especially
concerning their will--their overconfidence obviously left their
cold-blooded consciousnesses wide open to mesmerizing suggestion.
They could hear the moans of their many victims of vampiric
retribution, the wails of the weak so easily and lustfully
slaughtered by these soullessly slavish Enforcers--not to mention
those humans preyed upon simply for food during their impossibly
long reign. All could be heard in the dark recesses of their
merciless minds.
"No," the Enforcer who spoke the most for the death-dealing
duo rumbled under his rancid breath. "This cannot be. This...is
a trick. A trick!"
Nick never believed his hypnotic manipulation of long-buried
memories within the Enforcers would save himself and Natalie. But
he did believe it would slow them down enough for the real strategy
for salvation to be enacted. "Now, Natalie!"
As she leapt out from around Nick's refrigerator, he turned
away...and for good reason.
Held tightly in her hands was a make-shift crucifix of wood,
a half-meter in height and bound together by twine tied by
super-strong fingers belonging to a certain vampire-cop--an act
which resulted in singed fingertips in the scant seconds of
superficial contact with the cross made from a broken end table.
The Enforcers' reaction to the sudden exposure to the
righteous symbol was as agonized as it was shocked...
"Noooo!"
Then she did something else unexpected. She tossed the
make-shift crucifix at the Enforcers.
"Gyiii!"
As the two vampiric punishers writehed in unrivaled agony from
the slightest touch of the cross of wood, Nick and Natalie swiftly
dashed out the apartment's doorway...
--ker-rash--
...and smashed through the nearest window to take flight via
Nick's nighttime transformation into a person of the supernatural,
with a still-terrified Natalie clutched tightly to his side.
Needless to say, the Enforcers, quickly recovered from
Natalie's attack, would be in uncomfortably close pursuit.

"Fellow night dwellers!"
The throng that surrounded Vorakar turned their full attention
toward their leader as she stood before them regally. "The time of
the Hunt is nearly at hand! The Enforcers may even now be carrying
out my wishes regarding Nicholi and his human friend Natalie
Lambert. Soon our kind will once again stalk the land, striking
terror into the slumbering souls of the living...as we prey upon
the humans as wolves upon unprotected sheep! Hail to the Hunt!"
Echoing her savage sentiments, those younger--and
hungrier--vampire members took up the chilling chant. "Hail to the
Hunt! Hail to the Hunt! To the Hunt! The Hunt! The Hunt!"
"There will be no Hunt, Vorakar!"
The chanting halted almost at once, and Vorakar spun to stare
in snarling disbelief at the source fo a voice from her past...a
voice belonging to one she both loved with all her undead being,
and hated as totally as any creature could be capable of hating.
"Nicholi?"
"Yes, Vorakar," he hissed through glistening fangs, his eyes
glowing in renewed luminosity, "your plans have failed...all of
them!"
Her similarly shining eyes cut to Natalie timidly staying
close behind Nick in a land afoul with living evil. Her lips,
which could be as seductive as any seen over the century or so she
had become a creature of the night, drew back further from fangs
literally dripping with murderous desire. "You shall still be
destroyed, Nicholi...you and your human plaything!"
As several supporters growled and started toward them, Nick
spoke those same words uttered much earlier by Vorakar herself: "I
invoke the Challenge!"
Suddenly, silence swept over the gathering and reverberated
across the rolling landscape.
Nick Knight and Vorakar were to fight to the death.
And, unlike the late Aristole to whom she had issued the
challenge, Vorakar would fight back.
"Very well, Nicholi. It shall only double my delight to
dispatch you myself. Then...I shall feast upon the blood of Ms.
Natalie Lambert!"
Natalie glared at Vorakar's contorted countenance with a
hatred of her own. Unfortunately, her fears reigned unabated as
she felt evil eyes of the dozens gathered there staring with evil
intent at her all-too-alive body.
But none dared intervene or interfere with a Challenge. Even
the Enforcers, having arrived at the self-same instant of Nick's
claim to power, knew enough to stay in their place.
With fangs bared and animalistic growls rising in the
stillness, Vorakar and Nick Knight in an ancient, and most vicious,
vampiric ritual, one that no one outside the Community knew about,
or whose cruelty could even be conceived.
Without the slightest hint of gracefulness, as would be
otherwise expected in most formal methods of combat, Nick and
Vorakar attacked one another with the relentless ferocity of two
wild animals.
Indeed, that was exactly what they were during the Challenge.
Howling and hissing and snarling and growling, the two slashed
at each other while circling and grappling in a fever-pitched fight
to the death, their fangs finding flesh in an excruciating display
of unbridled rage, a century's worth of revenge and acrimony
released in one brief battle between opponents of equal cunning and
super-human strength.
Natalie could hardly believe her eyes, though she had known
for some time that male and female vampires shared the same level
of power...unlike humans of opposite sex whose strength often
varied greatly, especially during such physical confrontations as
she was witnessing that night.
Clothes were savagely ripped; skin was unmercifully gashed;
blood oozed from fresh wounds; pointed teeth tore into muscle and
sinew.
Nick was tossed aside with seeming ease. Quickly recovering,
he threw Vorakar an equal distance.
It was beginning to appear there would be no victor in this
unholy Challenge. Then, Nick made a startlingly vicious move...
*sshhh-SLASH-rrriiippp*
"Holy Mother of God!" gasped Natalie in shocked disbelief, as
a cleanly decapitated Vorakar plopped lifelessly to the ground in
much the same fashion as Aristole had fallen by her hand earlier,
with a battered and bloodied Nick Knight holding her head up for
all to see.
Then, his voice a raspy shadow of its usually soft-spoken
tones, he uttered what the older vampires had hoped to hear again:
"There will be no Hunt!"
Natalie was amazed at how swiftly this new leader was
accepted--albeit begrudgingly--by the younger vampires. Nick had
vanquished Vorakar and now stood as the undisputed Unifier of the
Undead.
She couldn't help but note how much sexier this newfound
position of power made Nick appear. Then she shook off such
subliminally meaningful feelings and glanced nervously toward the
Enforcers, half-expecting to see them preparing to attack and
avenge Vorakar's defeat and demise, but instead seeing only pale
mist where once stood the most feared of all vampires--a mist which
was even then separating and diffusing in the relentless darkness.
Even Enforcers respected the outcome of the Challenge...as
well as its winner.
"Now what?" Natalie asked as Nick casually cast aside the
severed head, his vampiric features still in place.
"We go back," he panted while struggling against the weakness
working on him, "and somehow fix the problem of my being a 'rogue'
cop."
"And the, uh, Community?"
Nick glanced over his shoulder at the slowly dissipating
vampire crowd and shrugged. "Guess I'll have to moonlight as King
of the Undead for a while."
Natalie smiled ever-so-slightly, a brief respite from the
tremendous tensions of the night. Then, the two took to the skies
as dawn was beginning to regain dominion over an unholy land.

The hour was early and dawn now was approaching. The mayor,
as usual, was in his aesthetically-decorated office long before any
of his many underlings had finished their first cup of coffee.
He was used to having the uppermost floor to himself.
However, on this still-black morning, he would find he was not
alone.
"Good morning, Mayor."
Nearly leaping out of his high-backed chair behind the
black-laquered desk, he exclaimed, "Knight?" as instant recognition
of the rogue detective caused a shift of one hand toward a hidden
panic button to one side of the desktop. "W-what are you doing
here?"
"Please don't, Your Honor," Nick coolly directed as he leaned
close to the Mayor, propping atop the desk on his hands. His eyes
were already using mesmerization to take control of the unprotected
consciousness of the Mayor. "About that undercover mission to weed
out crooked cops you sent me on, that resulted in the accidental
death of an honest officer..."

T H E E N D

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POWER STAR
The Imagination Anthology

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POWER STAR
The Imagination Anthology

COMING NEXT TIME:

-- Our latest all-Trek issue kicks off with Kirk facing "The Fire
Of The Forge" in a complete-in-this-issue story
-- From the internet, "100 Reasons Kirk Is Better Than Picard"
-- A Star Trek: The Next Generation poem, "Wasteland"
-- A review of the latest ST movie Star Trek: First Contact
-- Captain Morris' illness is progressing frighteningly fast and
the future of negotiations with the Tholians may hinge on Dr.
L'Aura finding a cure in the conclusion of the
ST:TNG-universe-based original tale "The Solar Wind Saga:
First Impressions"

Transport the next POWER STAR into your mailbox today!

Kimberly Murphy-Smith (kamu...@ix.netcom.com)
Managing Editor, POWER STAR Magazine
http://home.aol.com/kimmurphy

[zmast...@aol.com]

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