Chapter 76: The Messiah and The Successor; Converging Fate…

It had been hours since the battle at the docs with the Vampires…. And sonically empowered Android. Bronte's familial healing factor removed evidence of it ever happening. Mostly. Mend was still rattled. The Symbiote's anxiety was like an aftertaste for Bronte's primary emotions.

He'd have to get used to it. The world was loud. And he couldn't shelter his sibling from everything.

Especially when the days only got weirder. More sinister— which was an understatement he realized as they all stood in the basement eyeing a dead being of Talocan on ice.

The transparent box was illuminated by a single hanging light bulb overhead, casting the beings tan bruised skin in pale industrial light. Allowing them all to get a better idea of how he died.

Based on the impact wounds, missing finger nails and swelling around his joints, he got crushed to death. And being that he lived in the seas, he was denser than the average man.

Hell, a whole cliff side probably fell on him.

Brontë could practically see it.

The man he knew nothing of and his people stuck in a superheated deep sea hurricane, trying to swim away as their world became a vortex of hell and debris. Memories, statues, homes, schools, all shredded in uncontrolled rage. All after a war they survived for no reason. All gone because of Br—

He felt everyone's eyes on him. His time spent woods as a teen caused such feelings to make the hairs on his arms stand on end. Thankfully it pulled him off the dark road he was heading down at break-neck speeds.

They all gathered on the other side of the dead sea-men inside the ice box. Backs to a large metal wall.

"Another day another night raid." Blade said.

"How many have you guys done?" Bronte questioned.

"I've been doing this since the thirties, slim."

Bronte's eyebrows raised.

"They're like bugs. And the world is their habitat to infest. But this team? We've been at it for a little over a year."

Ilyana coughed and brushed her hair behind her ears, "Given what we know about your brother now, you are more than likely the reason for our creation."

Blade nodded and patted Ilyana's shoulder, "Our Demon-Queen Teleporter over here sensed a shift in Limbo from her demons probably around the same time Vampiric power shifted into the hands of someone else."

He then nodded his head to Jack, "Then our big bad wolf's curse of Lycanthropy activated on a Full Moon during a home invasion."

"V-Vampires. Apparently my neighbor was a Mutant….. after talking with you two days ago I think it's safe to assume they were trying to find the Mutant and hit the wrong house."

"Ohhhh I would've been at the right one as well." Mr Knight answered with casual confidence. Also passively explaining how he fit into the story.

"Peek-a-boo." Blade laughed at his own joke. "Luckily I had good standing with the Shape-Shifters in the Californian RedWoods. They let me borrow him…. No that ain't right, I knew I'd have him. Or one of them."

Brontë suddenly realized the second introduction of sorts was going somewhere.

"Around that same time, our newest Ghost-Rider here was hitting a Drug bust on Mr.Hyde…. A super-powered chemist and drug dealer under payroll to start rounding up Mutants dead or alive."

"Only name for the employer I got was Mestizo. I thought it was just a guy proud of his mixed heritage…. But….." Robbie went quiet once he saw Bronte's face.

"Mestizo can sometimes mean Mongrel…. Mongrel in Japanese is Daken."

"I found him and his little brother at a pizza shop….."

"Jack was hungry." Mr. Knight commented.

Jack rolled his eyes as if that was a pointless lie.

"It sounds like you knew your team would be a team before they did." Bronte surmised.

Blade nodded, "That's exactly my point. I did."

Ilyana walked to the left side of the room. The lights from the stairway leading up to the main floor danced on her skin as she pulled a handle and slid the metal wall open like a sliding-door, revealing a second wall. Covered in pictures, articles, symbols, writings and map details. All leading to a box in the center. Under the singular lightbulb hanging in the center of the room it highlighted its age.

The wood was crumbly and burned in places. Chipped and dry elsewhere. Brontë could smell old blood concentrated in the symbol rested at its center in silver. Not one he recognized.

Blade took the box and held it out to him, "This doesn't look familiar to you?"

Brontë shook his head, "Well… I guess you can't figure out everything for us. What you need to know is in this box, there's a prophecy worshiped by a Vampire cult known only as The Creed."

He opened the box and the smell of rot twisted Bronte, Jack and Blade's nose up a dozen ways.

Inside it were rolls of papers. Papers that he realized were actually old dried out flesh. Now leathery and dark.

Blade unfurled one of the fleshy scrolls and showed a fist with claws bursting from the knuckles. The art was so old and vague it could've been anybody.

"You see, The Creed believe Vampires as they are is unfinished. Like caterpillars to butterflies. They beleive their cocoon is bathing in the blood of mutants." Blade explained.

"I think a more apt wording would be, THE mutant." Mr. Knight clarified, "They don't hold mutants as a whole in very high regard. Only a specific kind."

Brontë nodded along.

"They call him, Varkis…. The Messiah." Blade turned back to the wall, pointing to an artistic depiction of a winged evil thing vaguely resembling a man standing in the face of the sun.

It didn't look like Daken.

But things weren't always what they seemed at first glance. He knew that from experience.

"They once thought it was this man." Ilyana pointed to a blurry picture taped to the wall, maximized and cleared up with new age technology. Even so it was still wrecked by time and motion blur.

All he could make out was a giant beast of a man, walking through a warzone of red eyes and bat wings. Wolfish monsters flanked him like shadowy ghosts that made his white long hair seem even more so.

"Romulus." Bronte finished.

"I…. I had no idea." Ilyana said guiltily.

"Me neither. But it explains his connection to them."

"How so?" Blade questioned.

"On Krakoa….. The Vampires…. They listened to him up until the end. Then they followed Daken. They helped him escape me." Bronte explained. "Along with the entire goofy ass island…"

Blade seemed to chew on the tidbit of new information for a moment before speaking, "Creed initiates."

"Or genuine members." Ilyana added.

Blade agreed, "Given all of your similarity to dear ole'... ERHM—Wolverine and incredible healing factors, I'm sure they all have speculated the possibility of you each being Varkis."

"Romulus controlled the selection process so it could work in his favor. He wants to keep stringing them along." Bronte realized.

"What else do you do with religious fantatics?" Mr. Knight said sarcastically.

"Man, don't you speak to an Egyptian god like daily?" Robbie questioned.

"No comment."

For a while it was silent.

Brontë was going over a million things in his mind and could sort out none of it. He at least needed one mystery answered for the day.

"So what? That's the prophecy? A Mutant-Vampire that will evolve all other Vampires into day-walkers?"

Blade shook his head, "Not quite. Varkis has two purposes. Join all Vampire covens under one. And die."

"I like the sound of that."

"No you don't." Mr. Knight interjected as he stood in the corner.

"Varkis dies in a blaze of glory… at the end of the world, leaving the remaining vampires to rebuild, anew. That last bit is assumed. Historical imagery does that a lot. And this is alll we got."

Blade pulled out a final flesh scroll. It was big. A big finely crafted art piece that tried its best to very clearly convey the world at its end. All rubble and smoke and destruction. All that stood was Varkis— under an eclipse. Surrounded by a Demon-Queen. A Flaming Vampire. A flaming Skeleton and what looked like an elemental."

Blade rolled it back up before he could notice anything else.

"So you see, our mission here is to kill the Messiah before he destroys the world and allows Vampires to become the dominant species."

"And that's before considering Daken seems to have his own new ideas on how to do that. The scariest leaders are the ones who aren't afraid to break tradition. Daken is breaking religious text crafted centuries ago." Mr. Knight explained.

"But if that's the case… he's not following the prophecy. So wouldnt all of this become useless?" Bronte questioned.

"On the contrary." Mr. Knight replied, "The beauty in prophecies this old is they get misinterpreted and co-opted as their scholars and followers age… change … divest. That makes this beautiful wall of art a big pool of grey. There's truth, there's lies. All that's certain is Daken wears the legend of Varkis like a crown just as Romulus did, and the Vampires do his bidding like peasants to their totally democratically elected king."

"He's dangerous." Blade explained, "But you know him."

"Yea….?"

"With your knowledge on that front, and our expertise and abilities, we can save the world. You can get even…. Maybe even get your magic mojo back."

Mr. Knight sighed, "What Blade's asking is, would you like to become a member of The Midnight Suns? We kick ass, you kick ass… efficient ass kicking is ideal in the ass kicking business."

"You think you said ass kicking enough?"

"Shut it, hothead."