There were only a few times when Sam Guthrie was alone at the Xavier
School, but this was one of them.
Somebody, said Erik Magnus Lensherr, had to be on duty while the rest
of the team used their passes to go to town, and Mags pointed out that
he himself was tired of puttering around the place. Even if it
meant sitting through “The Last Action Hero” with the kids, he was
going to get out. Thus, the rest of the New Mutants went to the
Multiplex, and Sam was stuck minding the store. Or the
school. Whatever.
He was in a T-shirt, jeans, and sock feet, cracking a math text, eating
an apple, sitting on the couch in the TV room, and watching a Dukes of
Hazzard rerun. About the best way to amuse yourself possible,
except for things which you didn’t want anybody to catch you doing.
On the other hand, if he was doing those sorts of things, he wouldn’t
have had what he did about his neck. It wouldn’t seem proper,
really. So he wasn’t living what passed for the high life in
town. Well, that was all right. Sometimes, being alone was
fine all by itself. Like tonight...
Somebody was banging on the door.
Sam’s head came up. Not too many people came to the School
without an invite. As far as he knew, nobody even had an
appointment, especially not after hours. Deduction: bad
guys. Especially if they were banging the door hard enough for it
to be heard this far inside the school.
He wanted to say, “I’m coming,” the way he’d do back home.
Instead, he plunked the apple and the book on the coffee table, jumped
up, and went as fast as he could over the waxed floors of the Xavier
School to a monitor room. The screens had video and audio feeds
of all the grounds around the place, and on the one that covered the
front door, he saw who was doing the banging.
A beautiful woman with white hair, an abbreviated white outfit, and a
white cape. She wasn’t exactly unfamiliar to him. Emma
Frost, the White Queen. Member of the Hellfire Club, teacher of
the Hellions, the New Mutants’ chief one-on-one enemies.
Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have thought of letting her in.
But the woman looked scared as hell.
“Magnus! Are you in there? Magnus, let me in! It’s
life or death!”
From the tone of her voice, she didn’t sound to be faking. Sam
grabbed a microphone, turned it on, and tried to sound as professional
as the guys on the cop shows. “State your business,” he said.
His words came out of a speaker set near the doorbell. Emma Frost
looked like she was panting. “Who is this? Where is Magnus?”
“He’s out, ma’am. Tell me why you want in.”
“I’m being chased, for God’s sake! Whoever you are, I mean you no
harm! I swear not to harm you. Please, let me in!”
Sam was about to answer her when he saw something else on the
monitor. Seeing it made him doubt his senses, double-take, do
just about everything except smack himself in the head to get his brain
back in alignment. But he’d seen a lot as a New Mutant, though he
hadn’t quite seen this.
Behind Emma Frost, what looked like a small dust devil was
forming. It seemed to come together into a human shape.
Tall, commanding, and caped, with a pair of eyes that Sam Guthrie knew
he didn’t want to look into very long. When the man-from-dust
opened his mouth, moonlight glinted on his teeth.
Sam Guthrie knew who Emma Frost was facing, then. The X-Men had
told him about fighting the one who stood behind her, the one whom a
terrified Emma was turning to see, and Sam had hoped he’d never ever
have to face the man. Or whatever he was.
Dracula stood before Emma Frost and looked unhurried.
“Come, my dear,” he said, extending his hand. “We have an
appointment to keep.”
Emma shrank away. She raised both arms, ready to try a
brain-blitz on him. He met her gaze, buffeted her power back with
a mesmerism that was tested over centuries, and froze her like prey
before a snake.
“That’s better,” he said, and moved towards her.
The door blasted open in a shower of timber and splinters and a glowing
figure in black and yellow cometed out and smashed Dracula in the
midsection, knocking him backward. Both of them went off the
porch, over the sidewalk, onto the grass. Sam, in his Cannonball
outfit, shot away from his foe. He didn’t even like the touch of
him. Instead, he flew back to the porch, where he came to a halt
before Emma.
The White Queen was still sitting there, her back to the wall of the
mansion, her eyes as vacant as a mannequin’s. Whatever was to be
done in this fight had to be done by Sam alone.
The force Sam had used would have taken down any five normal men.
Dracula was already getting up, and there was a look in him that Sam
Guthrie had never seen on any being he had ever faced. Not even
Sy’m had a gaze as evil as that.
“You, boy,” said the vampire. “Of you, I’ll have my first wine
this night. But not my last.”
He roared and hurtled forward. Sam powered up again, praying, and
jetted out at him.
An instant before they would have contacted, Dracula shifted
shape. Seeing it in a horror movie, done with special effects,
was one thing. Seeing a humanoid being twist and shape itself
into the form of a flying predator, that was enough to put chills into
the spine of even the most God-fearing of men.
Sam knew it was, because that was what it did to him.
A double-handed blow to the back told Sam that the bat had not remained
in that shape for long.
It hurt. Knocked the breath out of him, in fact. He slammed
down to the grass, singeing it with his power...a power which was
rapidly fading away. Sam rolled, trying to get up. He
needn’t have bothered.
Dracula, his eyes redder than hellfire, grabbed him by the shirtfront
and backhanded him back down with an arm as powerful as a heavy
machine. Sam cried out in pain.
He lay there on the ground, looking up at death.
Jesus help me, he thought. Jesus Christ, give me a hand...
“Now, boy,” Dracula said. “Now, your price of passage.”
And his mouth widened to a degree Sam wouldn’t have believed possible,
with a pair of glinting, pointed teeth that reminded him of nothing so
much as a diamondback rattler he’d once come upon in a field, and run
away from faster than anything. Except here, there was no running
away.
But...
As that great mouth descended, Sam’s right hand went to the collar of
his black-and-yellow shirt. He tore it open, and the thing that
was dangling from a leather cord about his neck was revealed.
Dracula hissed, not unlike that rattler Sam had once almost stepped on,
and drew back.
It was just a plain wooden cross. Kind of trendy, actually.
Lots of kids were wearing them these days, whether they were Christians
or not. But it seemed to do the job.
“Our Father, Who art in Heaven,” Sam began to chant. “Hallowed be
Thy name.” He grasped the cross in his hand and held it out
towards Dracula.
“Damn you!”
“Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done...”
Dracula was trying to use his mesmerizing power, but it was restrained
by the power of the cross before his eyes. And if the gleam it
seemed to have came just from the light of the full moon, from the
Cannonball power that was returning to Sam, or from some other source,
Sam Guthrie couldn’t have told you.
All he knew was that it seemed to be glowing.
Cannonball shot forward, shouting, “On Earth as it is in Heaven!”
With a screech, Dracula morphed into bat-form again, soaring into the
black night above Sam. That was just fine by Cannonball. He
turned, looking upward. Was there a hint of wings up there,
against the stars? Maybe there was. It was too hard to see,
even in the light of the full moon.
But he didn’t seem to feel the presence of evil anymore.
Sam looked at the cross in his hand. It wasn’t glowing
anymore. Had it ever? Well, that was something he wasn’t
prepared to doubt. Not after what he’d seen that night.
Then he set his gaze towards the porch of the mansion. Emma Frost
was standing there, not sitting anymore. Her palms were pressed
flat against the wall of the mansion, and, from what he could tell, she
still looked scared. But she was calmer, now. A lot calmer
than she had been.
He shot towards the porch, hovered for a second, neutralized his
powers, and walked towards her. “You okay, Miss Frost?”
She took a moment to answer him. “I am unharmed. I...thank
you.”
“Welcome.” He shifted from one leg to the other. “Maybe you
can tell me what that was all about?”
Emma looked at him, and finally spoke. “Perhaps it’s best you
don’t know all of the story. But...years ago, when I was a
girl...someone came to me. One of my family. But he
was...like that.” She gestured towards the front lawn, and Sam
knew who she was talking about. “He said that he’d come for me,
when the time was right. I didn’t know what he meant, then.
Later on, I learned the truth. I also learned that he died,
though I never knew who killed him.”
“So why did...that one...come looking for you?”
“He must have learned of me from...my relative. Decided to claim
me, in the other’s stead. That’s what he seemed to say to me when
he found me tonight. I was too far from the Hellfire Club.
I was hoping Magnus was in. If only you had let me in, he
couldn’t have crossed the threshhold without being invited.
But...you did well. I thank you.”
“You’re welcome, ma’am.”
Emma extended her gloved hand, tentatively. Sam took it and shook
it.
“I am very sorry,” she said, “but this can’t change what is between
us. I have duties as well. But...you have my gratitude.”
“Okay.”
“I must...I must leave. But...”
Sam put a hand to the thong around his neck, pulled the cross from
around it, and held it out to her.
“Not without this, you don’t.”
Hesitantly, she took it, and placed it about her neck. “Once
again...thank you.”
“Don’t thank me, ma’am. Thank God.”
“Indeed.” She looked at him. “You won’t...”
“I won’t tell on you,” he said. “Not if you don’t want me to.”
She nodded. “Goodbye, Sam Guthrie. And, once again...thank
you.”
He watched her walk away until she was lost in the night. Then he
went back inside.
-C-
Xi’an and the bunch got back shortly after 10 p.m. Sam looked
up. He was watching the local news and still working on the math
book. The apple was now just a core, and there was a half-eaten
bagful of potato chips on the coffee table, as well. He was
wearing his T-shirt, jeans, and socks, but he smelled as though he’d
just had a shower.
“You should’a seen it,” proclaimed Rahne. “Arnold plays this cop
who...oh...I don’t want to ruin it for ya.”
“Yeah, he’ll see it next time he gets to go,” said Roberto. “I
know Sam’s the biggest Arnold fan around here.”
Erik Lensherr sniffed. “I never expected to see the man who
played Death in such a movie, though. The man is positively
slumming.”
Xi’an bent closer to Sam, curiously. “Uh, Sam? I just
noticed. What happened to that cross you used to wear around your
neck?”
“Oh...kinda lost it. No, really, I gave it to a friend. Somebody
I reckoned needed it worse than me.”
Erik raised an eyebrow. “And that would be?”
“Just a friend, Mr. Lensherr. Just a friend. I ain’t
touched the chocolate cake in the saver. Yet. Anybody wanna
see if they can beat me to it?”
“You’re on!” said Rahne.
Sam didn’t need to use his Cannonball powers to beat them.
*****
This one’s an emergency birthday fic for Cherry Ice. It’s a
sequel of sorts to “A Friend of the Old Family.” Happy 19th, kid!
Characters are the property of Marvel Entertainment Group. No
money is being made from this story, no infringement is intended.
