Warnings: Some discussion of unpleasant topics, but if you've gotten this far, it shouldn't be too shocking.

Notes: After six months, the Geese fly again. In the meantime, the whole Weapon-X arc was brought to a close in Ultimate X-Men, and this story goes AU some time after issue #10 -- before the appearance of the Brotherhood at the end of #11. See the main Goose page for details. Dyce and I participated jointly on this one; she wrote the Sabretooth section. She's had her part done for months. The delay is all my fault. Thanks to Dex for Toronto geography; if I screw up, don't blame him. :-) And for those of you familiar with Jean's famous lines from X-Men #101, yes, I modified them a bit.

Half way through, Ororo had exited the bathroom with a generic-white hotel towel wrapped around her middle and another about her hair, to stare at the TV. "Oh, my god," was all Jean could say as the camera panned across the damaged area and her mind struggled to wrap itself around what she was seeing, in terms of devastation. If this was indeed a mutant-related accident, then the mutant involved was a high-level alpha. The only person she knew who had that kind of raw destructive capability was Cyclops at full power, and maybe Storm. The amount of collateral damage suggested that it might be a manifestation-related accident, and there were those three dead bodies, too.

Was there a young mutant out there who had manifested catastrophically and killed his friends in the process? What must he be feeling? "We've got to help him," she said, hopping off the bed and grabbing her shoes.

Storm blinked at her as if she'd lost her head. "Help who?"

"The mutant who started that fire."

"What makes you think it's a mutant, or that the person would want our help, if it were?"

"Storm! Think about it! He -­ or she -­ just started a forest fire and killed three people by accident! What must he be feeling? What were you feeling when you almost fried that playground full of kids?"

That probably hadn't been a wise memory to resurrect. Ororo pulled in her chin and just glared. "You're jumping to conclusions," was all she said.

Jean stopped in the midst of putting on one of her tennis shoes and blew out in a frustrated huff. "Maybe so, but call it a hunch. I get them sometimes. I'm usually right. That wasn't just any explosion of the normal kind. A new mutant just manifested. We have to help him."

Rolling eyes and gripping the towel tighter around her middle, Ororo said, "Okay, let's assume -­ for the sake of argument -­ that it was mutant related. Why should we go play Team Rescue? Hello? I thought we were looking for Cyclops and trying to stay away from Weapon-X?"

"This is part of what the X-Men do, Storm -­ help new mutants learn to control their powers. We've got to find this person before the cops do. Or Weapon-X."

"So just like that, the mission objective changes?"

"Yes. Just like that. You volunteered to come along, you know."

Sighing, Ororo pulled the towel off her wet hair. "Then let me dress and let's grab our stuff. Who knows if or when we'll get back here."

Within five minutes, they were on the highway headed east along the north shore of Lake Ontario.
 
 
 
 

Lucy was asleep (finally), and Creed had gone out to ensure that no fire fighters or other emergency personnel came too near the house where they were currently holed up. Fortunately, prevailing winds had blown the blaze in the opposite direction until the fire fighters had been able to contain it. Madelyne was left with the unconscious pair of teenagers whom Creed had brought back to the house in a truck just a few hours ago. One of the them -- the boy -- was the mutant who had started the fire, or so Creed had told her. Maybe the girl was a mutant, too, or maybe she wasn't, but according to Creed, she'd fought like an exhausted panther to protect the boy, who'd passed out almost as soon as Creed had shown up. Creed had been forced to knock her out, too, just to get her safely back to the house.

Now, she appeared to be coming around. The boy remained unconscious, for good or ill. Seeing the girl stir, Maddie slipped over to sit down beside her on the double bed she normally shared with Creed . . . had shared, in fact, ever since the night they'd fooled Mystique. Neither of them had ever discussed it, but when they'd reached this new retreat, they'd simply each chosen a side of the big bed and that was that. Maddie liked the comfort of it, feeling more secure with him present, but she wasn't sure what was in it for him. He'd never made any sexual demands on her.

Now, the girl on the bed moved from shifting restlessly to abrupt consciousness. It was so sudden that Madelyne started in surprise when she shot up to a sitting position and glared at Maddie, snapping, "Who are you?"

"Madelyne Prior."

"Where's your white-haired friend?"

Madelyne blinked. "My . . . who?" She wasn't sure Creed would really qualify as "white haired."

"That white-haired girl you were with, when we saw you in the exchange building at the border. What d'you want with us, anyway? Why were you staring at us then and why'd you kidnap us now?"

Thoroughly confused, Madelyne said, "I don't think I am who you think I am."

And that, of course, begged the question of just who she'd been taken for. Surely Jean Grey wasn't in Canada and looking for them. Why would she be? Unless Weapon X had recaptured her and forced her to . . . .

"This girl you saw at the border who looked like me?" Maddie asked. "How were she and her friend dressed? Was there anyone else with them? An old man with glasses and a thin face?"

Suspicious, and perhaps equally baffled, the other girl didn't reply immediately, then said only, "There were just the two girls in the exchange building when Le­-, ah, when John and I were crossing into Canada. One was tall with really long white hair, which I noticed because she was black. The other could have been your identical twin."

"Were they dressed in black uniforms?"

"No. They were dressed in blue jeans."

Chewing on her lower lip, Madelyne considered that. If this girl were right, then the other two had almost certainly been Jean Grey and the X-Man called Storm. Madelyne had never met Storm -- there had been no reason for her to -- but she'd heard her described, and there simply couldn't be that many tall black girls with long white hair. But why were they headed north into Canada?

"What's going on here?" the other girl asked.

"I'd kinda like to know that myself," Maddie answered. Then she looked back at the girl on the bed. "What's your name?"

"Danielle. But you can call me Dani; everyone does."

This Dani, Madelyne thought, would better be described as handsome than pretty, with a broad face and strong features including a high nose with a deep space above the narrow mouth and down-slanted eyes so dark, the whites were more cream than milk. Her skin was a deep, burnt sienna, but her long, coarse hair wasn't pure black. The sun had brought out reddish highlights, particularly at the ends. She wore it in a ponytail, mussed now from all the activity. If Madelyne had never seen anyone quite like her, she had seen enough videos about the outside world to guess her Native American. "Are you also a mutant, or just your friend?" Maddie asked. Obviously taken aback, the other girl just blinked. "It's okay," Maddie added. "I'm a mutant, too. We don't mean you any harm. Creed brought you back here before the police arrived. I convinced him not to just drive you off in the truck and leave you. He's . . . not always nice, but sometimes he's good."

Still puzzled -- maybe especially by that last remark -- the girl said, "I don't really know what we are. I get these . . . visions. Like in dreams. But that doesn't mean I'm a mutant. I'm an Indian. John -­ " She stopped and glanced down at the sleeping boy. "I've never seen him do anything like what he did tonight. So yeah, I guess he's a mutant."

"You said you crossed the border? Where are you from? And why are you here in Canada?"

"We're from New Mexico." But the girl -- Dani -- didn't elaborate further. Surmising that she still didn't trust her benefactors, Madelyne rose from the bed.

"I'm not going to hurt you. Really. Come with me." And she led Dani out to where Lucy was sleeping in a child's bed in another room, surrounded by fluffy pink that belonged to some other child and looked rather incongruous next to her slightly feline features and clawed hands. Seeing the toddler, Dani sucked in a breath. "That's my daughter," Maddie said. "We're running, too."

A tall girl, Dani glanced down at Madelyne. "Who are you running from?"

"People involved in a project called Weapon X. They take mutants and train them for military purposes. Well ­- most of them. I was different." She looked away, out the door. She thought she'd heard something in the yard beyond, but trusted Creed implicitly these days. If there was anyone out there nosing around the house who shouldn't be, he'd catch them. "I was a genetic experiment. There was, in Weapon X, another girl who was my genetic twin. That may have been who you saw."

Dani pondered that. "I wonder if this program has anything to do with my nightmares?" But then she shrugged and glanced at Madelyne again, intending to ask another question. She never got the chance. Two things happened at once. First, the boy in the other room woke and called out in surprise, and second, the front door slammed opened and a distinctly female voice -­ not Creed by any stretch -­ shouted, "Hello? Anybody here?"

Shocked, Madelyne pushed past the Indian girl into the hallway. It offered a direct line-of-sight past the living room to the doorway. Standing there in the open entry was Jean Grey. "What are you doing here!" Madelyne asked, alarm pushing her past the common sense to keep hidden. Head snapping around to fix on her, Jean Grey's jaw dropped.

Then she reached with her mind, meshed with Maddie, and yanked.

Madelyne was no telepath. Essex had both scared it out of her and suppressed it via hypnotism. As such, she'd never suffered the traumatic onset that Jean had, but also had never experienced the shocking glory of seeing inside another's mind. Until now. Until the mind in question was so parallel to hers at a genetic level that she couldn't not respond. Like a note and its overtone fifth, together they formed a telepathic C-chord, as pure as a pair of bells echoing off one another. Jean Grey pulled Madelyne Prior out of herself into a mental tone poem that somehow encompassed the whole of both their pasts, an understanding in the gut, not the head. Madelyne had met her doppleganger, but instead of heralding death, the Other brought completion.
 
 
 
 

Creed sniffed the air and growled softly. Oh, hell. Her.

He smelled the other one too, the redhead, the original of whom Maddie was a copy. Shit. He wasn't sure Maddie was ready for this. He didn't want her anymore scared than she already was, it was bad for the cub. And Lucy always picked up on Maddie's fright and got nervous, not to mention the two twitchy little teenagers that Maddie'd begged cutely to be allowed to keep. Maybe he shouldn't have encouraged her to be so maternal.

But Maddie would have to face the X-brat someday. He had to deal with Storm. Before she put a knife in someone.

He could have crept up on her easily enough, but she might have had a nervous attack of hail. So he let her hear him coming, and came out on the opposite side of a large clearing, so she could see him, too. "Whaddya want?" he demanded.

Storm tensed, hand going to a knife at her hip as she shifted nervously. She wasn't pulling it; a knife was less than useless against him and they both knew it. Yet he had a certain sympathy for empty gestures of bravado. "Your head on a fucking pike," she spat, eyes gleaming with hate.

Creed opened his mouth to scare her witless, and then something entirely unexpected happened. He just lost the urge. He didn't really want to mess the kid up anymore, and he was suddenly annoyed and bored with the whole lengthy dance. He was done with Weapon X, after all. Things were different now. He was having a weird kind of fun with Maddie and their cub, and if he killed Storm, Maddie might get freaked out.

She made a pathetic attempt at a growl, shifting the tiniest bit closer. "Trying to figure out what a pike is?" she taunted.

Creed waved an irritable hand. "I know what a pike is. I probably used one sometime. Look, kid -- "

"Kid? Kid!" she hissed, eyes going white and empty. The wind started to pick up, and it had a chill to it that it hadn't had before.

"Okay. You're not a kid. Actually, I'm damn sure you're not a kid." He couldn't help the little leer that went with the words. She definitely wasn't a kid, and she'd been . . . fun.

Mentioning it probably hadn't been the best idea, though.

"You goddamn bastard!" she screamed, lunging at him, hands outstretched, clearly so mad that she just wanted to rip his face off with her bare hands. "I'm gonna fucking kill you!" The wind picked up sharply, screaming as if sharing her rage as it tugged at his hair.

He backhanded her across the clearing, not bothering to use his claws, just knocking the wind out of her. "Okay, so yer mad at me." She screamed and lunged again, and again he slapped at her, knocking her into a tree this time. "Stop that," he growled, hauling her to her feet and giving her a little shake. "Or I'll stop tryin' to be nice.

She spluttered at him, swiping at the blood from a cut in her temple before it could reach her eyes. "Trying to be -- "

"Yeah, trying to be fucking nice!" he growled, getting out of temper with the silly bint. "I ain't even started on you yet, girl, so don't tempt me. And I ain't done you any real harm. Now or then." He saw her mouth tighten, and huffed out an irritated breath. "I could have. Noone woulda stopped me 'f I decided you'd be prettier with my name carved into yer back."

She tensed and stilled, eyeing him warily. "And you think I should be grateful for that?" she hissed, fingering her knife again. Probably imagining how much fun it'd be to have his balls for a change purse.

"Hell, yeah, you should be grateful." He could probably get the knife away from her fairly easily, but it wasn't worth the bother. "You think you feel bad now? Nothing to what coulda happened to you." He grinned, a cool, leonine grin that exposed his fangs. "I practically protected ya, kid."

"Protected me?" she said in icy disbelief. "Is that what you call it?"

He shrugged, folding his arms negligently. "Sure. Made sure ya ate. Let ya stay with yer friends. Made sure none of 'em got killed right off. Didn't carve ya up none. How much nicer do you want, huh?" He was falling back into the old, poor grammar of his early memories. Good. Better that she underestimate him.

"How much nicer do I . . . ?" She shook her head, baring her teeth in what might have been a grin, but wasn't. "You're some piece of work, Creed. I should kill you right now."

"How?" he asked bluntly. This was getting boring. "That knife won't do it, I'll tell ya that now. You could work me over with it all night and not kill me -- if I let ya, which I won't. No way you could beat me hand to hand, either. I don't die o' cold, ever. Y'could try to do me with lightning, but in these orchards?" He tapped the tree beside him. "You bring lightning down and the fires might burn for days. No way you and yer friend'd get out." She tensed up again, and he grinned, shifting ever so slightly closer to her. She backed right up, tight with fear, and he snorted. "Don't get yer panties in a bunch," he said, not unkindly. "I'm not gonna touch ya."

She made a harsh noise in the back of her throat. "Why? Because you've got the clone to mess with now?" she demanded.

He stiffened, frowning. "No," he growled flatly.

"Why not?" the girl taunted, an edge of rage in her voice. She didn't like that Maddie got to be safe when she hadn't been. And he had been quite gentle with her, the ungrateful little bitch. She wouldn't have a single scar, inside or out. Not physically, anyway.

Creed growled again. "Because she's only five," he said grimly. "And I don't screw little kids. Ain't that sick." He deliberately turned his back on the girl, and headed back to where he'd left Maddie and Lucy. He didn't like leaving them alone too long.

He didn't get that far. Almost melting right out of the trees, two figures met him on the way. A soft snikt of metal claws releasing, and then a cigar-roughened voice spoke, "Hello, Sabretooth. Fancy meeting you here."
 
 
 
 

I always wanted a twin, but my mother said two of me was too much for the world to handle -- that was before the telepathy, even.

They weren't quite words. At this level of fusion, words -­ even mental ones -­ were superfluous. It was more an idea transferred whole from Jean's mind to Madelyne's, complete with all the attendant longing.

Sara was so much older than me, she wasn't really a sister. She was off to college before I even got out of grade school. I felt as if I had the idea of a sister more than I had a real one. So I dreamed of having a twin, someone just like me. But I didn't have quite this in mind. Irony, and anger, but not directed at Madelyne.

I'm sorry, Maddie thought back. It wasn't an apology springing from personal guilt so much as an apology for what had been done to Jean. Madelyne understood very well the feeling of being a pawn; that, they shared -- as in so much else, they were image and mirror.

You really are my twin, Jean said. That's all an identical twin is -- nature's clone. The zygote splits in the womb, and violá, two copies of one gene set. We share the DNA; we just didn't share the womb.

Or the childhood.

Shuttlecock weaving of regret, thought, inspiration, idea. It made a tapestry with an image from Jean's past . . . . Annie.

Who is Annie?

Easier to share the memory than explain. Annie had been closer to Jean than Jean's own sister -- the childhood friend who'd lived across the street, another faculty brat exactly one month to the day older than Jean, but quieter, more sensible, and deceptively smart. Annie, dead at eleven, the victim of a hit-and-run accident on their normally quiet suburban avenue, and Jean had held Annie in her arms as she'd died, all Annie's terror and need and wrenching grief tearing open Jean's nascent telepathy before Jean had been ready. So Jean had shared Annie's dying, and been given a part of Annie's essence. But the experience had been too much. Catatonic for weeks after, Jean had lain in a hospital until a professor from Scotland had heard of her situation and flown the Atlantic to see her. Charles Xavier. He'd suppressed the memories and tied down Jean's telepathy until, years later, it had manifested again, even more catastrophically. But by that point, Xavier had deemed her ready, and brought her to Westchester.

But Annie. . . . Annie had remained caught in a corner of Jean's mind like a mummy in a crystal coffin, the epicenter of Jean's childhood affection and her power, both -- preserved, protected, and walled away. Forgotten and not-forgotten.

Annie who'd had no future.

Madelyne, who had no past.

And Jean, who was only half of herself. As long as Annie was locked away, Jean's power remained hobbled.

Let her out. Give her to me.

It's not your past.

No, but it is a past, and that's more than I have now. Let her out.

Crystal shattered, freeing a ghost who reared up in a wild tornado of memories, firing synapses in Jean's brain and waking a power that might have been too much for one mind alone. But there wasn't only one mind -- there were two, and the shade of another. Saturated by half of Jean's power, Madelyne opened herself to let Annie roar inside, filling her with eleven years of memories. They weren't Madelyne's directly, and they made up less than half her body's age, but they were more than mere video-tape proxy. At one level, Madelyne Prior became Annie Richardson. Annie gave her a past, and she gave Annie a future. Jean Grey had her sister, her twin, and the fullness of her power. It burned every nerve of her body, and Madelyne's, too. United in that unique, beautiful agony, they screamed, "We are the resurrection! We are the life incarnate! Now and forever, we are Phoenix!"

The flash the followed was psychic more than optical, but it was still visible to anyone who had a tie to either Jean Grey or Madelyne Prior.
 
 
 
 

"Where's Madelyne, Sabretooth? What do you know about what happened to her?" Scott's question. He'd stepped in front of Logan to keep the other man from letting an age-old feud interfere with their current objective. The Wolverine didn't complain. In the end, this was Cyclops' show, and Sabretooth switched his attention from Wolverine to Cyclops. Behind the big man, Scott could see the white flash of Ororo's hair as she hurried up the path to cut off Sabretooth's escape. Where the hell had she come from? But he didn't have time to worry about that now.

Sabretooth glanced over his shoulder at her. "I know yer there, kid. Don't pretend yer sneaky." Then he turned back to Scott, wrinkling his nose and growling once, softly. "What you want with Maddie, Red-eye?"

"What do you think I want? She's carrying my child."

"Yeah, so? She's mom to mine, too."

That, Scott hadn't expected, though he'd known the girl had been pregnant prior to this, pregnant several times, in fact, but . . . "Yours?"

"Yeah. Name's Lucy. She's 'bout two. Maddie's a good mom. She'll do fine with the one that's on the way, too, so you just go on back to where you came from and quit worrying."

"What! And leave you to raise my kid? I don't think so, cat-breath!"

Snarling slightly, Sabretooth straightened up to his full height. "And what makes you think I want you to raise mine? Lucy ain't yours; you don't know shit about her powers, or how to teach her to use 'em. And Maddie ain't yours, neither."

"Well, she's certainly not yours!"

"I never said she was. But I raised her up when she was a new-born. I taught her most of what she knows about the world. And I can watch over her better than you can. She's just a little kid."

"She's not a -- "

"She's five, Red-eye. She ain't been around more than five years, and all of it inside Weapon-X. You're not so old yourself -- barely past the peach-fuzz on your chin. You couldn't even keep your team from being caught, and they're your age. What makes you think you can keep her safe, and your kid and mine, too? No goddamn way. Maddie stays with me. You wanna see your kid? That's fair enough. A dad oughta want ta see his kid. I ain't gonna stand in your way. But you can come visit. I'll let you know where when we're settled in."

Several vintages of fine rage mixed and soured inside Scott, along with a hard liquor edge of guilt for letting the X-Men be captured in the first place. He could feel the drunk power of it swirling inside him, just waiting for him to let it out, let it blast a hole through Sabretooth that would likely take days for the cat-man's healing factor to repair. Before he could do or say anything, though, a hand clamped down hard on his shoulder. "Chill out, kid." Logan -- ironically playing the voice of calm and reason. "He's just trying to yank your chain."

Ororo had advanced up the path behind until she was almost close enough to kick Sabretooth in the ass. "Well," she said, "since you pointed out that Madelyne isn't your property, or Scott's" -- she glared at Scott past Sabretooth's shoulder -- "why don't you take us back to wherever she is, and we'll let her decide. Wow, novel thought. Maybe you males could assume for once that the woman might have a brain and some ideas of her own, huh?"

"I told you, Storm," Sabretooth replied without looking, "Maddie's just a little kid. You gonna let a little kid decide what's best for her?"

"She isn't a little kid! She's been 'alive' for five years, yes, but physically, she's an adult, older than I am. She's had three kids of her own, and she's had to learn to survive Weapon-X. The normal categories don't quite apply. Don't patronize her, you furry asshole."

She might have said more, or Scott or Sabretooth might have interrupted, but a bright, bright flash of light silenced all of them. It illumined the area all about the cabin for a few seconds, like a million watts of electricity could light a baseball stadium, dazzling them, then it went dark and a wild shout pierced the air.

"That's Jeannie!" Logan said and, turning on his heel, headed off through the woods at a sprint. Scott, Ororo and Creed followed.
 
 
 
 

Danielle Reynolds wasn't sure what to make of events currently transpiring. Leaving aside for a moment the shocking occurrences at the lake earlier that night, she had woken in a strange bed, in a strange house, with a strange-familiar woman watching them who claimed to be the genetic twin of another girl whom Dani and Alex had seen earlier that day. Then this woman had said she was a mutant and had a mutant child, and had informed Dani that the yellow-haired cannibal spirit with the fangs who had come upon Alex and her earlier that evening was yet a third mutant -- all of them fleeing a program named "Weapon-X" who turned mutants into military killing machines.

Either this was too weird not to be real (truth being stranger than fiction), or Dani had gotten herself lost in a Monty Python movie. All she needed now was an attack by a killer rabbit with big, nasty teeth.

But before the mutant mother had been able to reveal more, another young woman had shown up at the house -- thinner and slightly younger in face and body, but otherwise the first woman's spitting image. They'd obviously been shocked to see one another, but they hadn't said a word, just stared at each other for a good five minutes, separated by maybe fifty feet, but acting as if the physical distance didn't matter at all.

Now, and getting tired of the silent waiting, Dani glanced over at Alex, who was leaning against the door to the master bedroom. He was shivering and flushed, as if burning up with fever again, and he had a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. She'd tried to approach when he'd first awakened, but he'd shaken his head violently and shied away. "No!" So she'd kept her distance, more to placate him than because she was afraid of him. Back at the lake, he'd saved both their lives, and so what if he was a mutant? She might know dipshit about her tribe of origin, or Indian life in general, but she knew a few things that she'd read in books. Power of any kind was the gift of the spirits, like her dreams, or his . . . whatever it was he did. And maybe she was a mutant or maybe she was just a prophet, like Tenskwatawa or Wovoka, but it didn't matter. Power was power, and all power, of body, mind, or spirit, came ultimately from the Creator. It was up to men -- and women -- how to use it. Alex had a good soul. He didn't scare her.

In any case, the staring match between the two red heads had ended, and as if sleepwalking, they approached each other, hands raised until their palms met and fingers intertwined. They were glowing faintly, but not like Alex had before his power had erupted into the night sky. This was more . . . ethereal. "What the hell?" Dani muttered even as the glow swelled and rose, taking on the shape of a bird unbending. The head came up and the wings extended, rising to beat the air and expand further, all out of proportion to the body. Abruptly, the two women spoke, one echoing the other like a stereo recording.

"We are the resurrection!"

"We are the life incarnate!"

"Now and forever . . .

". . . we are Phoenix!"

"I might hurt her, Dani!"

Rolling her eyes, Dani got Madelyne situated on the couch, then went back for Jean. She'd just gotten the girl checked for broken bones and hoisted her up when the front door slammed open again and several new figures filled it, including the blond cannibal-spirit who had first 'rescued' Alex and her back at the lake by cracking her over the head. "Jeannie!" said one of newcomers, a rough-looking character who -- improbably -- had what looked like knives growing out of the backs of his hands. "What'd you do with Jeannie?"

At the same time, and from behind her, Alex cried out, "Scott! How'd you get here?"

"I could ask you the same thing," said a taller, darker, far more buff version of Alex.

"I didn't do anything with her," Dani told Knife-Man, even as she watched the tall man push his way inside the house, stalk over and -- rather awkwardly but with great emotion -- wrap up her ailing friend in a bear hug.

"What the hell happened to you, little brother?" he asked.

"Brother?"said three other people, all staring in shock at the tall man, who must be Scott Summers, as he embraced Alex -- who was trying to squirm free.

"Don't! I might hurt you!"

Scott ignored Alex's protests but pulled away to lay the back of his hand on Alex's forehead. "God, you're burning up. Are you sick, Lex?"

Knife-Man had yanked his attention back from the family reunion to say to Dani, "If you didn't do anything to Jeannie, then what the fuck happened to her?"

"She passed out. After she and her" -- Dani pointed back to Madelyne lying unconscious on the couch -- "did some kind of freaky sci-fi thing complete with light-show special effects."

The blond cannibal-spirit had ignored all of them to make his way inside and kneel down by the red head on the couch, sniffing her and stroking her hair with a care that Dani would never have credited if she hadn't seen it with her own eyes. What was it about these red heads and their man-animal protectors? But thinking about dogs and territorialism, she handed off the skinny girl to Knife-Man, who swung her up in his arms as if she weighed nothing at all. "Hey, baby, I got ya," he said, gravely voice pregnant with something that might have been care.

That left everyone attached to someone except for Dani and the white-haired woman. They exchanged a glance and the other girl said, "I think it might be a really good idea if everybody got inside the damn house and we started at the beginning. Like, maybe, with some introductions? Since when did Scott acquire a freakin' brother?"

"Since his parents, Major and Mrs. Summers, produced a second child two and a half years after himself," said a new voice behind the white-haired girl, out in the dark beyond the still-open doorway. "A fascinating family, genetically speaking." Either the newcomer had mutant powers of invisibility, or they'd all been so distracted, they hadn't noticed him arrive.

In any case, his voice elicited immediate, almost violent, reactions from everyone present except Dani and Alex. The white-haired girl squeaked and spun while the two animal men snarled. Scott jerked about, planting himself protectively in front of Alex and yelling, "Essex! Stay away from us, you goddamn perverted motherfucker!"

"Really, Mr. Summers. Such language for the man who has made you father to a messiah?"

The newcomer stepped into the spilled light illuminating the porch. In latter middle age, he had graying black hair, vampire-pale skin, and inky eyes behind fashionable glasses. Those eyes ate light like the bottom of a well -- the same haunting, demon eyes of her nightmares. The eyes that had been hunting for her, and Alex, too.

"Shadow Eyes!" she said. "You're the Shadow Eyes!"

Go on to David's "Sitting Ducks"
 

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