"In a year's time there will be nothing but death here."

Miracleman looked out across the twilight, his eyes focused upon the setting sun and his short blond hair ruffled by the cold wind that danced about him in a melancholy that remained shared between him and the countryside yet always stayed unspoken.

The communications relay that he had fixed into his costume remained silent, the Mystery Society's operatives unreachable by any of the standard channels.

Marlowe and Ohls had returned to their native Los Angeles whilst Faustus had remained upon the surface of Mars, searching for his lost 'guide'.

The others were harder to track down; it seemed as if a black cloud had fallen upon the world, casting a shadow across the whole Earth.

Miracleman shook his head, rubbing his tired eyes with his thumb and index finger.

These were dark times.

For Zoe

The blond haired man smiled, a limp cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth as his forehead rippled, the flesh twisting in new, horrific configurations and pushing his hairline back.

He thrust a hand down and pulled his victim up from the floor where he had finally fallen after a long drawn out chase.

The victim's face was a perfect portrait of sheer terror; thick beads of perspiration running down his bloated face and mixing in with the trail of blood that had been exorcised from him during his fall.

The blond man sneered at him, ghastly phantom features wrinkled in playful glee like a wild animal with its prey.

"I swear I didn't do anything." The older man protested, sweat soaking through his once white shirt in pools of discolouration.

"And that's the problem, innit?" The other smiled, taking a deep and final drag upon his cigarette before reaching out and grinding it down on the fallen man's face.

He screeched out with pain, the kind of sound a cat might have made had it been purposefully kicked out a forty-story building.

"You didn't do anything." The other reiterated. "Now, in my opinion, that's just plain laziness."

The shadows behind him moved, opening up to reveal a tall woman, her raven black hair falling in arcs over her face and down past her shoulders.

The younger man looked up, a dark smile carved into ice white features now tainted by nocturnal predatory instincts.

"Alright, love?" He beamed. "Fancy a bite?"

The woman's eyes danced with hunger as her face underwent the same changes that the blond haired man's had gone through only moments before hand.

The elder looked up at her, watching the quiet madness within those dark eyes of hers as a silent prayer to a God he had not cared for since childhood formed upon his lips.

"Oh yes, Spike," The woman moaned, her voice drifting upon the wind. "I'm very, very hungry." She continued moving closer, her expression never wavering. "And Mister McCoy has been such a bad, bad boy."

The blond haired man - Spike, the woman had called him - looked down at him, a sadistic smile spread across his lips.

"And we know what happens to bad boys don't we, pet?" He said quietly.

"They get punished, my love, don't they?" The woman answered dreamily.

"The way I figure it is someone's gotta protect the innocent. I mean what kind of a bloke would I be if I didn't stick up for what I believed in?"

"Do it, Spike!" The woman whispered, her voice suddenly drained of its dreamy quality and harsh with sudden anticipation. "Do it now!"

He looked down at the fallen man and shrugged apologetically.

"Sorry, mate," He beamed. "Can't argue with the missus."

McCoy opened his mouth to scream out but the darkness was already rushing down to meet him.

There was a moment of brief confusion when the streetlights seemed brighter than they had ever seemed before and then there was nothing.

Nothing but shadows.

***

The camera's bulb flashed once, a resounding noise like that of a antique gun being fired for the first time in centuries filled the air as McCoy's final resting place was recorded for the prosperity of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Philip Marlowe flipped open a box of matches and lit his cigarette, his face betraying no emotion whatsoever.

Standing at his side, Bernie Ohls cradled a plastic cup full to the brim of black coffee.

"What do you make of it?" Ohls questioned, looking like a perfect portrait of sleep deprivation.

Marlowe didn't blame him. He didn't particularly appreciate being woken up at five in the morning either.

He took a deep breath and looked down at the corpse again.

"I don't know, Bernie," He apologised, scratching the back of his head. "This really isn't my scene."

Ohls looked up from his coffee.

"The poor son of a bitch was completely drained of every last drop of blood, Marlowe. Surely that must interest you."

"Sure it interests me, just not in the way you think it does." Marlowe replied.

Ohls tilted his head.

"How do you figure?"

Marlowe took another drag on his cigarette.

"Well for starters, I might be asking how this poor bastard got so far from town when his car's parked up several miles back."

"How'd you know about that?" Ohls asked.

"I hear things." Marlowe replied.

"It's possible that he might have got a lift from someone."

"Possible but unlikely."

Two officers stepped, trailing a black tarpaulin over the dead body as Marlowe and Ohls stood watching, like two vultures in trenchcoats.

"McCoy was a petty man. Paranoid to the extreme." Marlowe explained. "He'd been done for fraud a few years back but got away with it. He went into business as a legal advisor in tinsel town whilst investing in one of Gwynn Geiger's little business ventures. He never touched a drop of liqueur in his life and he never smoked. Explain to me how someone of McCoy's obvious nervous disposition would leave his auto unlocked and just hitch a lift into town, the wrong end of it at that."

"Christ, Marlowe," Ohls muttered. "You don't miss a thing, do you?"

"It's not my business to miss things, Bernie." He replied.

Suddenly Marlowe's muscles tensed and he felt the presence of someone else at his shoulder.

He turned to face a young woman, her jet-black hair tied back and resting under a hat and her womanhood hidden by the somewhat large pinstripe suit she was wearing.

"Excuse me, Mister Marlowe, may I have a word with you?" She asked, smiling politely.

Marlowe looked over to Ohls, who evidently hadn't registered the woman's presence - if he could see at all, that was.

"Sure." Marlowe muttered and clicked his fingers in front of Ohls' face in order to wake him from his reverie.

Bernie Ohls jumped slightly and looked up at him.

"Listen, Bernie, I got a few things I have to attend to, I'll get back to you on this one." He said, patting him on the shoulder.

"Sure thing, Marlowe." Ohls replied. "Just don't take too long."

"Some of us have got a living to earn." Marlowe retorted, turning away with the invisible woman following behind him.

"Yeah," Bernie smiled. "Bet you miss that regular police pay cheque."

An arrogant smile spread across Marlowe's face.

"Not in the slightest." He replied. "I'll catch up with you later."

Ohls nodded and returned to his speculation.

***

Mephostophilis hung in the ether of the vast alien dome, its claws dug deep into the aura that permeated the building and its large, insectlike eyes watching as the beast made its way along the twisting corridors of its underbelly.

The dome literally stank with evil, a stench that made the daemon feel quite at home yet at the same time disturbed it on a level that it did not fully understand.

There was something wrong with the beast, something that it couldn't quite understand. It was almost as the source of the beast's evil was a realm outside of the Hell that spawned Mephostophilis, something that not only worried the ancient daemon but left it feeling quite terrified.

The daemon clawed its way across the ether, scurrying across the ceiling and down the walls as it followed the beast through a wall that seemed to open as the cow-stained creature approached.

Beyond the moving wall was a dank room, much like a metallic reinterpretation of the room where both Mephostophilis and Faustus had seen the beast sacrifice its victim.

Slowly, the beast lifted the podgy digits of its fingers and drew the cowl back from its head, revealing the hideous masque of mutilated cattle flesh.

Mephostophilis allowed itself a sigh of relief. It was easier to deal with monsters than it was to deal with anything capable of reason.

Then something unprecedented happened.

Slowly the digits that the daemon had believed to be the beast's fingers rippled, giving birth to a new set of fingers - a new set of human fingers; thick, fleshy maggots unfolding from the darkness of its robes.

The maggots crawled across the cattle masque, digging into it and drawing a sickly looking liquid from the trenches it burned into the flesh. The face fell apart with ease, crumpling like the discarded falsehoods of an All Hallow's Eve pageant.

Nausea settled in Mephostophilis' stomach, the taste of raw flesh and burning vomit rising through its unholy metabolism.

The masque fell away from the beast and it was revealed as being human - all too human.

A twisted cry rose from the daemon's throat, hanging in the false oxygen air like the spirit of a lost soul.

The man in the dark, blood stained robes looked up and choked on his fear as the daemon descended downwards, sharp and ancient claws closing the gap between them.

Emotion spread across his face as he finally realised that the horror that confronted him was real.

There was no chance for further evaluation.

With a deep, groaning sigh, the daemon's claws pierced the fresh human skin of his face, pushing their way inside and exploding in arcs of grey and red from the back of his head.

The man's body twitched as his head fell apart, unravelling at the seams and turning to mush beneath the fury of the daemon's attack. The life drained from him, ebbing out and leaving a brutalised shell where he once stood.

The corpse twitched a final time and then slumped forwards as Mephostophilis allowed it to pass through, changing his physical consistency.

Something was very wrong here, as if the powers inherent in Hell's domain were being harnessed, used and contaminated by some other force.

It offended the creature's sensibilities, attacking the very morals that it had held sacred for so many centuries.

The daemon turned its back on the corpse and moved further into the building.

In the end, it didn't matter which side of damnation you were. It was all about standing up for your own and Mephostophilis was not about to hand over the keys to Hell to an insignificant virus like humanity.

A hideous grin curdled upon its face and slowly it moved on.

***

Marlowe kept his eyes upon the road driving back towards his office as the woman with the pale skin and the dark hair sat in the passenger seat.

Her presence disturbed him somewhat but he found that he was beginning to become accustomed to it. Years had passed since he had first spoke to her brother, who even now remained imprisoned. They had never met in the flesh, so to speak, but had spoke often in what Marlowe could only describe as visions.

Often during those meetings he wondered if he was mad but the tall man had assured he wasn't and now he sat in his car, driving back towards the small, cramped confines of his office with the tall man's sister, a woman who was death personified.

Stranger things had happened at sea, he reminded himself.

"So..." Marlowe said awkwardly.

Didi smiled calmly.

"Aren't you curious?" She questioned.

A frown crossed Marlowe's face.

"Curious about what?" He asked.

"About that man's death. About how he lost so much blood." She continued.

The niggling snowball of thought at the back of his mind slowly grew larger, becoming an avalanche of ideas and theories that haunted his consciousness.

"No." He finally said. "I'm not interested at all. I've seen enough of that kind of thing to last me a lifetime, sister."

Didi remained smiling, looking at Marlowe from the corner of her eyes.

"This is about Mars, isn't it?"

He was silent for a moment, flicking ash from the end of his cigarette and out of the car window.

"Damn right it is." He grumbled. "I'm an average Joe, I enjoy a smoke, whiskey sour, a beautiful dame. I don't appreciate being turned belly up on the surface of some god-forsaken world that no man in the right mind has any place being."

Didi reached out a hand and clutched at Marlowe's hand, forcing him to turn and look at her.

"Look at me, Marlowe," She said, her voice serious and deep. "That man was drained of blood because he argued with the Wamphyri. I want you to be careful."

Marlowe shrugged the arm off.

"What the hell's a Wamphyri?" He demanded, his foul mood worsening.

She shrugged, her carefree demeanour returned.

"You know." She smiled, reached out her arms towards him. "I vant to drink your bloooood."

"Vampires?" Marlowe scoffed. "Like Count Dracula?"

She hit his arm...hard.

"No, not like bloody Count Dracula. Like, things that grow inside a person and take them over. Parasites."

"And these wankers they're in Los Angeles, yeah?"

"Not wankers, Wamphyri!"

"Okay." He smiled playfully. "Wamphyri. They're here and looking for helpless virgins to drink the blood of?"

"No." Didi explained. "They're here to kill people."

***

Spike held the cigarette between his jaundiced fingers, slowly turning it round and round before finally returning it between his lips and drawing a deep breath.

"Poor Mister McCoy." He smiled, his thin lips pursing in his traditionally cruel smile.

Drusilla clung to him like an artificial atmosphere, curling herself around his shape, fingers darting between the creases of his long, dark trenchcoat as if probing for secrets that he might have hidden from her.

"Mister McCoy was a bad boy, Spike." She whispered enticingly into his ears. "I don't like bad boys."

He turned to her, that cruel smile remaining etched upon his features.

"Not even me, pet?" He questioned.

She made a barely audible sound and snuggled up closer to the cold of his trenchcoat.

"Of course I love yah, Spike. Yah my precious." She whispered, biting his ear playfully.

The grin spread across his face.

"Well that's alright then innit?" He reached down and placed his lips upon hers, sliding his tongue between the two rows of fanged teeth.

***

The complex was a vast teeming mass of curved metal and glass, rising up into the black skies and casting a terrifying shadow across the red soil.

At the heart of the complex was a secret, a hideous secret that had no name...not until recently.

The shadows watched the progress of the unearthly creature, a smile lighting up their concealed features.

Soon, this creature's secrets would be torn from whatever physical form it wore, by necromancy if needed and then, and only then, would those shadows be ready to reveal themselves to the enemy...

***
 

Marlowe kicked his feet up onto the battered wooden desk and looked gloomily out of the distorted glass that the large uppermost panel of his office door had been constructed from.

He thought about what Didi had told him, about these 'Wamphyri' whatever they were, and tried to dismiss it as old wives' tales.

And yet something inside of him choked every time he heard that word or even thought it. Some primordial fear rising in his belly and clutching at his throat.

Wamphyri...

Wamphyri...

WAMPHYRI!

He shuddered visibly and tried not to dwell on the subject.

***

Outside, the sun was rising.

It was daylight outside, searing sunlight that lapped against the outside of the windowless building in cold waves of luminescence.

Dru looked decidedly worried, her delicate eyes dancing fearfully in the all-encompassing shadows of the morgue.

Spike reached up and kissed her gently on the forehead.

"It's alright, pet. Daddy just needs to have a little chat with someone and then we can all sleep safely." He whispered.

She smiled vacantly.

"Daddy knows best." She swooned, smiling at him.

He nodded sagely, his fingers curling around a thin silver implement that lay on the bedside table next to the row of corpses.

He advanced down the centre of the room, leaving Drusilla standing at the closed doorway they had entered by and finally came to a stop when confronted with the bloated corpse of the man they had killed the night before.

A cruel smile fluttered across his face as he leant down and whispered in the dead man's ear.

"Hallo, Mister McCoy. There's something I want to talk to you about." He beamed and thrust the implement into the dead man's belly.

Noxious pent up gases filled the room and a little drip of liquid ran down his naked belly.

"Ohhhhhh." Dru swooned ecstatically. "He smells just like dead daises."

The vicious smile that had attached itself to Spike's face grew by miles.

"He does, doesn't he, pet?" He beamed, driving the implement further into the man's belly and splitting the corpse open down to the groin.

He paused, leaving the instrument festering in the open wound like a silver arrow, drawing the dead man's gases in through his nose as if inhaling cigarette smoke and then stripping his clothes till he stood naked before the cadaver.

Dru's eyes opened wider and she licked her teeth with the tip of her tongue. Standing naked before the corpse, Spike thrust a hand deep into the stomach, fiddling around for a moment or two, fingers curled around intestines as they tore the secrets from the man's insides.

Another long moment's silence and then Spike cried it, a smile upon his lips.

He turned to face her, his nudity not all but overshadowed by the shadows of the room.

"Better get some rest, love." He smiled. "We're going to see a man called Marlowe later tonight."

***

Miracleman stood on the delicate boarder between France and Germany, a thin strip of land that represented an absolute change in culture, language and peoples.

He shook his head solemnly, moving just a fraction or two quicker than normal so as to avoid being noticed by any wandering eyes.

Sometimes he felt as if the world were about to be swallowed into the jaws of some great beast, a creature that he could not fathom anymore than he could understand the nature of the oncoming events.

There was no way to prevent what would happen here but he had enough patience to wait the storm out and once the dust had cleared, he would refashion the world. A new society based upon no authority.

A quiet smile crossed his face as he contemplated what seed might yet grow from the rain of this oncoming storm and then he silently turned his back, body leaping from the soil beneath and up into the air and out of the planet's atmosphere...

***

Mephostophilis stood before the great white screen watching the silhouette of the man rest calmly in his chair, leaning back and lighting a cigarette.

"Reveal thy face unto me, oh beguiling conspirator. Show thyself and let Hell know who would contrive to steal such thunder." The daemon demanded.

The shadow was silent for a moment, clouds of cigarette smoke rising from its mouth and hanging in the air above the shadowy hat it wore.

"My name is Doctor Vulcan." It finally answered in a man's voice. "I have brought you here to offer you a somewhat simple choice -- Serve me and you shall rewarded ten fold your effort. Resist me and I shall destroy you."

The daemon arched its hideous dried leather eyebrows.

"Ah and so another Doctor calls upon the counsel of Old Nick. What seeks thee, man of doctorates and shadows? Power or dominion?"

"One cannot exist without the other." The shadow snapped cautiously. "Power is nothing if there is no one to exert it over, dominion is foolish if there are none that would listen you. I seek both these boons, old devil. I seek the power to hold dominion over all this Earth and every other like it."

The daemon chuckled cruelly, the long discoloured claws of its feet tapping against the steel floor.

"Then you are unfortunately disillusioned, my strange fellow. There is no place for an omnipresent ruler 'pon the surface of these worlds. The God which you seek to replace has long since resigned His claim in these matters."

"But you understand the powers of Hell," The shadows protested. "You know its inner-most secrets and through those secrets, I shall achieve my dominion."

Mephostophilis' back arched with suspicion.

"And how, good sir, would you persuade one such as old Mephostophilis into thy service?"

The shadows were silent for a moment, tension running through the old daemon's body.

"I don't need to persuade you, Mephostophilis." They finally whispered, soft as the falling of any autumn leaf. "I just need to kill you."

***

It was twilight by the time Marlowe had left his office, the red sun discolouring those familiar Los Angeles streets like the borrowed halos of some higher power.

He stopped in the doorway of the building, sparking a match against the red brick and lighting his cigarette.

He looked up from below the rim of his hat and saw Didi waiting beside the car.

"This is an unexpected visit." He muttered, hands deep in trenchcoat as he made his way over and pulled open the battered, black door of the driver's seat. "This a business call or are you just falling under my charms?"

Didi beamed innocently.

"Business, I'm afraid, Mister Marlowe." She replied with an apologetic shrug.

"Best get in the car then." Marlowe replied. "I have my best arguments whilst driving."

"I can't stay long." She apologised again. "I just wanted to make sure you know what you've got on your plate."

"I already told you I wasn't taking on the case. McCoy was a two bit street punk with a gambling problem, I've seen that story a million times already."

"You don't need to take on the case, it's coming after you." Didi warned.

Marlowe exhaled twin streams of cigarette smoke and frowned in her direction.

"How do ya figure?"

"McCoy knew about you, Marlowe." She sighed. "He knew about your little Society..."

"It's not my society." Marlowe protested.

"Same difference." She rubbed her eyes in a tired manner. "Listen Marlowe, I'm Death, you know that, and what I'm trying to say is that by the time McCoy got to me, he was pretty screwed up." She looked up at him. "Someone used necromancy in order to find out what he knew."

Marlowe shuddered at the word, although he didn't quite know why.

She looked meaningfully towards him.

"They're at the morgue, Marlowe. At least, that's where they were earlier. Be careful."

He smiled to mask his concerns.

"Don't worry about me, princess, I'm a grown up now."

At the back of his mind, something was beginning to itch...

***

One by one the lights seemed to flicker out of existence, distant stars winking into the vacuum as the cold metallic room growing colder and darker still.

Mephostophilis listened carefully for the approaching footsteps and closed its eyes, allowing its body to fade into non-substance.

A blade carved through the space the old daemon had previously occupied and the shadow cried out audibly in surprise.

"'Tis a fool that thinks he can harm old Mephostophilis." The creature beamed proudly. "I am no petty lackey that thee can pry secrets from as if they were held tight in a virgin nun's soft places. I am a servant of the vilest planes of Hell, herald of Lucifer and tempter of man, not some dead thing that lurks beneath the soil."

Fear gripped the shadow's larynx and he said nothing further.

"But mark these words, good Doctor Vulcan, now I know thee and thy intentions and surely shall I be back to claim thee with all the furies of the Pit at my command. You have tipped thy hand far too early in the game and now thy motives are clear. Oh yes, I shall be back for thee, thou hast a special place amongst us."

Its teeth glittered as the sole source of light within the room and then slowly but surely it faded from view completely, leaving Vulcan shaking with the blade clutched close to his chest and a dead scream rising in his throat.

Far from being over, the game had only just begun.

***

The gun rested uncomfortably in Marlowe's hand as he pushed the windowless room's door open and gagged on the stench.

The inside of the room had been redecorated with someone's entrails, thick, slivering intestines curled around one another and slices of internal organs, half-sticking to the walls.

He stumbled forwards, breathing deeply, his body bent double.

"Sorry 'bout the mess." A voice from behind called.

He spun round, clutching the gun as if it were his last lifeline.

Standing up against the wall behind the door was a tall man in a long trenchcoat and white shirt, a ragged black tie hanging from the collar, and black trousers that looked as if they had seen better days covering his legs and ending in a pair of beaten old issue army boots.

"You," Marlowe stuttered, feeling sick to his stomach. "You're the Wamphyri."

The other man threw his arms wide and shrugged.

"Guilty as charged." He beamed and lit a cigarette. "Me and Dru were coming to see you as a matter of fact, I've got a favour I need to ask."

Marlowe spun on his heels and turned to face a tall woman, younger than he was, her hair falling back behind her shoulders and her slim, elegant body clothed in moth-eaten velvet of red and black.

She smiled and waved a hand at him and he could feel his mind swimming.

"Look mate, this fucking breaks my heart doing this." The other man continued as he shifted his attention back.

"What, you being a vampire or whatever and having to ask for my help, the lowly human being that I am." Marlowe smirked, trying to regain some of his composure.

"No. You being a bloody Yank and me being English and having to ask for your help."

The detective frowned, not quite understanding what was happening.

"Look, this is the way it is. We know who you are, we know about your little Society and we're coming to you to ask help."

"What do you want?" Marlowe questioned.

The other learnt closer, a conspiratorial look upon his face.

"I want you to help me kill someone." He confided.

"What are you talking about?" Marlowe looked appalled at the idea the other man had suggested.

"I mean, I want you to help us get even with the bastard who made us like this. Eye for an eye and all."

"I'm not in the business of just killing people." Marlowe protested.

"But you are in the 'right' and 'wrong' business, Mister Marlowe. You're no saint."

Marlowe shook his head sorrowfully.

"No, I'm not a saint."

The other's face curled in a smile that almost qualified as a disfigurement as he reached out and patted Marlowe on the shoulder.

"Listen, mate, we're going to be around for a quite a bit so think the offer over, yeah?"

"You didn't offer me anything." Marlowe protested.

"I didn't kill yah either." The other replied.

The woman brushed past Marlowe and coiled herself around the blond haired man, her eyes dancing with intensity.

"When that big poof, Miracleman comes and sees you, you tell him about his. He'll know who we are, we've met before." He doffed an imaginary hat at the detective. "Looking forwards to working with yah, Marlowe." He beamed proudly. "Be seeing yah."

Marlowe watched as they made their exit, their footsteps echoing about the metal corridors, before he fell into a half-sitting position in the blood-stained room, his fingers curled around the black telephone that had fallen from the desk and left like an upturned turtle on the floor.

He dialled a number and held the mouthpiece up towards him, lungs breathing deep from his cigarette.

"Hello? Listen, Bernie, it's Marlowe. You better get down to the morgue. I've got a story to tell you." He said and then hung up.

The smoke was congealing in the air as he closed his eyes and rested his head against the metal wall. For a moment he thought about the insanity of his new circumstance and then he dismissed it because after all, that's what he'd always done. If you don't learn to adapt in this job then you're already dead and Marlowe... Marlowe was far from dead...

***

Deep beneath the raging waters slept an ancient force of nature.

It was an anomaly, its birth had been caused by radiation, alien intervention and pure chance.

Over the past few years it had awoken at various intervals, rising up from the shallow seabed and stomping out towards inland. It only happened once in a while but it gave the monster something to think about while it slept.

Soon it would wake up for good and then the whole world would know its name but for now it was content to sleep...

Deep breaths...

For now, the beast slept...