RAISING HELL

Part II

By Wesley Overhults

New York City, Earth-167

Harry Osborn let out a groan and blearily opened his eyes. He tried to move and realized that he couldn’t. He was laying spread-eagle on some kind of table. Whatever straps he was tied with were strong; he could tell that much. He flexed his muscles and assumed he could snap the bonds with his super strength but there was a problem. His last dose of Goblin formula had worn off by now, the damage his body sustained from the battle with the Hellfire Club helping to tax his healing factor more than normal and burn the formula out of his system.

“You want this, don’t you?”

Goblin shifted his head to the side and saw the demonic version of his father holding a vial of the Goblin formula tantalizingly out of his reach. He also realized that even though he was wearing his costume, he couldn’t feel the familiar weight of the device around his wrist or the belt he wore around his waist that stored all his weaponry. Without his equipment or his Goblin formula he was completely defenseless. He studied Devil-Goblin more closely and realized that it wasn’t just a costume that Norman Osborn wore. It was too detailed and too real to be a mere suit. That blast of fire he delivered wasn’t natural either. Harry’s costume was fireproof but that blast scorched him straight to the bone, even straight to his soul. What had his father done to himself in this world?

“I’m not your son,” stated Goblin. “I’m from a different reality. We just want to get home. We don’t care what you plan to do to the Hellfire Club.”

“It’s an interesting variation on my old formula,” admitted Devil-Goblin as if Harry hadn’t said anything. “Isn’t it funny how the forces of the universe conspire against someone and yet at times they give him exactly what he needs? You see, in this world you died trying to become me. The derivative of the formula you took was instantly fatal. I, however, have turned away from science in favor of a more powerful force in the world.”

“You made yourself into a monster just like you always do,” retorted Goblin, struggling against his restraints.

“I attained a far greater power than science or technology could ever grant me,” declared Devil-Goblin, tossing the vial of formula over his shoulder and listening to it shatter on the floor. “Now I wish to give that gift to you, son. All these notions of heroism have corrupted your mind the same way your reliance on technology has corrupted your body. I’m going to cut the cancer out, Harry. You deserve a better family than those time-tossed fools. You’re better than they are, better than everyone just like I am. It’s time to come home, son.”

“What the hell are you doing?” asked Goblin.

“An apt phrasing,” replied Devil-Goblin, raising his glowing hand and beginning to chant words in a language Harry had never heard before in his life.

Harry realized what was happening in the exact moment it was too late to do anything about it. The magical sigils carved into the floor under the table began to glow with power that wasn’t of this world. Harry screamed in pain as he felt the power flow from the sigils and into him. He felt it twist his body, his muscles contorting and bulging as unholy strength coursed through them. Worse than the damage to his body was the damage to his mind. All his memories of Peter, of his teammates, of Kate began to burn. Liz. He was losing Liz. She was slipping through his fingers like grains of sand. He fought to hang on but he couldn’t. His memories of her were burning just like the rest of his mind and his soul and the only thing he could do was scream until his throat was raw. After that, he was lost to the shadows.

The Hellfire Club

“We don’t have time to deal with these people,” stated Wasp. “We have to go after those freaks that took Harry.”

“No one’s going anywhere until we get some answers,” decided Sandman before grabbing the weakened Sebastian Shaw by the collar and hoisting him to his feet. “Who were those people?”

“Using the term ‘people’ is too kind for them,” replied Shaw, still sick from the absorption of Devil-Goblin’s hellfire bolt. “Norman Osborn attempted to usurp control of the Inner Circle from me years ago. I exiled him and his followers from the Hellfire Club. They apparently found a new source of power, one that I’m very interested to explore myself. Now, I suggest you put me down before I decide to expunge the remaining contents of my stomach all over your chest.”

“This is the life you want, Paige?” asked Sandman, dropping Shaw and leaving for the door. “Can’t say your dad would be proud of you.”

“Ah know,” replied Husk shamefully. “Will . . . Ah wanna come with ya’ll. Harry’s mah teammate too.”

“If you’re with us then be with us,” said Sandman, the other Exiles leaving with him.

“Paige, you’re a Hellion,” reminded Sunspot.

“No, Ah’m an Exile,” replied Husk before chasing after her friends.

“Nice to see you back with us,” admitted Sandman once Husk caught up with the group. “Now, how do we find these people?”

“I can track them,” offered Pixie. “He ate one of my soul daggers with his chest. Those things are part of me so all I have to do is track that and it should lead us to him.”

“We find him, we find the others and we find Harry,” concluded Sandman. “Teleport us as close as you can, kiddo. It’s time we get our teammate back.”

Pixie nodded and closed her eyes, trying to get a fix on the piece of herself she lost inside Devil-Goblin. Technically she had never done something like this before but she knew her teammates were counting on her so she couldn’t fail them. She felt that piece of her calling out to her, begging to become part of a whole again. All she had to do was mentally lock onto that calling and then teleport the Exiles there.

“Got it,” she whispered before teleporting herself and her teammates there in a puff of pixie dust.

“We have to go after them,” decided Sunspot. “They took one of ours, we take her back.”

“She’s not a piece of property, ‘Berto,” reminded Thunderbird. “She made her choice.”

“Bullshit,” snapped Sunspot. “I’m going after her.”

‘Second that, mate,’ agreed Chamber as he noticed that Emma was rubbing her temples. ‘Miss Frost, are ya okay?’

“You children will do no such thing,” ordered Frost sternly, composing herself and turning her attention to the tasks at hand. “Assist Leland and Shaw while Pierce and I go check on something.”

She nodded to Pierce and the White Bishop nodded back in response. During the battle, Emma felt something. It was a psychic cry she hadn’t felt in a long time. It meant that the prisoner they were keeping in the basement of the Hellfire Club could possibly be free. Shaw would have all their heads if they let that prisoner loose before the Inner Circle finished studying his abilities. She wasn’t going to allow that to happen.

“We should’ve used those cuffs on him,” said Pierce as he and Emma raced to the lower levels of the building. “Shaw was overconfident in thinking all we had to do was starve him to keep him under control.”

“Shaw did what he thought was best,” reminded Emma.

“And now his arrogance has damned us all,” said Pierce as the two of them reached the cell and found it empty.

The two members of the Inner Circle began searching the room but they knew they wouldn’t find anything. If their prisoner was smart, he would be long gone already with no intention of sticking around. Any reason he had to stay wouldn’t have been a good one for the Hellfire Club anyway.

“If he created a portal and left, I could possibly be able to telepathically sense him when he reappears,” said Emma. “Other than that, I have no way of tracking him. How the hell did he escape?”

“Apparently we should’ve hired better help,” said Pierce upon checking the dead body of a Hellfire Club guard. “I thought we told all of them not to get too close to the damn bars. This moron wasn’t paying enough attention.”

“He’s coming back,” realized Emma.

The White Queen was too late in her revelation. A glowing portal of energy appeared around Pierce’s cybernetic arm, lopping it off as it closed. Pierce didn’t feel any physical pain but he grabbed at the metal stump all the same. Another portal opened up and Trevor Fitzroy stepped through it. Emma immediately locked Fitzroy’s brain in a telepathic vice to keep him under control but he teleported away before she could fully contain him.

“We’ve starved him enough that he’ll burn through that life energy quickly,” said Pierce. “The problem is that he could be on us in a second and drain us dry to replenish his powers.”

“Like this,” hissed Fitzroy, appearing behind Pierce and grabbing him around the throat, sucking the life out of him with just one touch.

Emma employed her telepathic powers once again but it didn’t matter. Fitzroy’s power worked on contact and once he turned it on he only needed to keep touching the person to use it. Pierce was dead in a matter of minutes and Fitzroy was recharged enough to go after Emma. Weeks ago, he had appeared on the steps of the Hellfire Club, flung from some distant future he couldn’t remember. They had immediately put him in a cell and left him there, feeding him only occasionally but making sure he could never touch anyone and use his mutant power on them. He wanted only one thing now. He wanted to make sure all the members of the Hellfire Club suffered just like they made him suffer.

An Abandoned Osborn Industries Complex, Queens

“You sure this is the right place?”

Pixie only nodded to answer Sandman’s question. She knew because she could feel that piece of her soul calling out to her. He was here, the goblin man who had knocked her out and taken Harry prisoner. Whatever magic the goblin man possessed, it was similar to the dark magic that was in her own soul. The difference was that she still had her soul, albeit it was tainted and corrupted. Devil-Goblin and the other members of the Hellfire Cult had lost their souls to the dark powers that gave them their abilities. Would the same thing happen to Harry?

Pixie looked at Wasp and sensed the nervousness and desperation in her heart. It came with her powers, this ability to be more emotionally in tune with others. Kate obviously had feelings for Harry, feelings that weren’t necessarily returned. Megan hoped for at least Kate’s sake that Harry was okay but she learned long ago to expect the worst.

“Ring the doorbell?” suggested Daredevil.

“Knock,” replied Sandman before turning his hand into a giant hammer and sending it crashing through the front door. “Alright, I want everyone on their game. We don’t know who these people are or what they’re capable of so we need to think on our toes. Our main objective is rescuing Harry. Anyone gets in the way of that, flatten them but keep them alive.”

“They’re not alive anymore,” warned Pixie. “I don’t think there’s any problem there.”

“Having a soul is overrated,” assured Hellhound as he and two of his devil dogs came at the Exiles.

The wolves gnashed their teeth and pounced towards the Exiles, scattering the team and separating them to make picking them off easier. Wasp stunned one of the wolves with a sting blast before Sandman beat it down with a giant mace of hardened sand. The other wolf pounced on him from the side but couldn’t sink its fangs into his body. He threw the wolf off of him and then sent a blast of sand from his chest at Hellhound. The Black Queen dove from above and barreled through Sandman, doing little damage other than scattering his body in all directions. Sandman reformed his body and took a shot at the woman once called Justine Hammer but it didn’t faze her in the slightest.

“Getting all grabby on the first date?” inquired Daredevil, weaving his body in different directions to avoid Cadaver’s lethal touch.

“I’m going to rot your mouth first, you little twit,” assured Cadaver as he tried to get his hands on the crimson-clad Exile. Unfortunately, this action seemed harder to accomplish than he thought due to Daredevil’s agility.

One of Hellhound’s wolves leapt at Daredevil from the other side but he saw it coming thanks to his danger-sense. Johnny jumped and twisted his body so that the wolf only pounced on Cadaver. He flung one of his d-discs at Cadaver, knocking him in the head with it. The blow to the zombie’s skull didn’t do him any harm. Daredevil’s danger-sense went off again and he executed a cartwheel to his right to get him away from the blast of hellfire coming in his direction. He looked up and expected to see Devil-Goblin but he was shocked to learn that the elder Osborn wasn’t alone.

“Harry?” asked Wasp as she noticed the duo of Goblins hovering in the air above them. “What the hell did he do to you?”

Harry’s costume hung in tatters around his body, the purple scraps of material covered in scorch marks. His skin was the same sickly shade of green as his costume and the muscles bulging under that skin weren’t the result of chemical enhancement. The spell that Devil-Goblin had cast was a version of the one Mephisto used on all the Hellfire Cult. It wasn’t as powerful but it still seemed to have done its work.

“Showed me my true purpose in life,” answered Goblin, his hands burning with the same fire that had consumed his father’s soul. The monster inside him had finally caught him and now there was nothing left of the person he once was.

“Now that my son’s eyes are open, we plan on finishing you people off first,” explained Devil-Goblin. “Then the Hellfire Club will be the next ones to taste our wrath.”

“This isn’t you, Harry,” said Wasp, flying towards her former teammate in an attempt to talk to him further. “Remember us, remember the life you wanted to get back to. Remember Liz.”

“You’re wasting your breath, Kate,” warned Daredevil, springing towards Goblin to ground him. “Guess I get to pay you back for a few missions earlier when you tried to beat some sense into me.”

Daredevil didn’t even get to lay a finger on Goblin. A blast of hellfire from Harry’s hand sent Daredevil flying backwards and down to the floor. Wasp wasted little time in launching a round of sting blasts at both goblins. The stinger bolts didn’t do any damage to them and they both fired back with a volley of hellfire blasts. Wasp shrunk herself and darted away from the blasts, still feeling the heat of the otherworldly fire. She couldn’t believe what had happened to Harry. Whatever it was, it wasn’t his fault. Devil-Goblin had twisted him into a monster.

“You were such a nice boy,” lamented Pixie, flinging a round of soul daggers at Goblin like they were throwing blades.

To her surprise, one of the blades actually hurt Harry when it hit him. It was a good sign because it meant that he still had a soul. Whatever spell Devil-Goblin had cast on him to mutate him, the real Harry was still somewhere in there just begging to come out again. That hope, however, would be short-lived if the Exiles didn’t live through this fight. Pixie flew towards Devil-Goblin, spiraling through the blasts of hellfire until she came face to face with the maniacal leader of the Hellfire Cult.

“You’ve got something that belongs to me,” she told him, reaching out her hand to Devil-Goblin’s chest. “I’d like it back now, thanks.”

Devil-Goblin grimaced in pain as Pixie pulled her soul dagger out of his chest and reformed it in her hand. He couldn’t believe such a puny girl could actually have hurt him. It galled him and he struck back at her with a fierce blast of hellfire that knocked her out of the air and into the floor below.

“Big mistake, Osborn,” warned Sandman, shooting a stream of sand at Devil-Goblin that slammed him into the ceiling. “All these years and I never got the chance to give you the beating you deserve. Guess the universe has a soft spot for me.”

Goblin saw his father in danger and moved to help. He rained down hellfire on Sandman, scorching his sand form and turning part of it to glass with the heat. Sandman created cover for himself through some sand shields and then elongated his body, twisting it through the barrage until he was above Goblin. He blasted his former teammate with both hands, the two streams of sand throwing Harry at a downward diagonal angle until he and the floor had a rather unfortunate meeting. Sandman didn’t have time to concern himself with Goblin’s health. Hellhound and two of his wolves barreled through the tower of sand that was his lower body, effectively knocking his feet out from under him and causing him to topple. The leader of the Exiles turned his momentary disadvantage into an attack. He twisted his body so he would land face down. Once he landed on Hellhound, his body became a giant blanket of sand intent on smothering the Hellfire Cult member trapped underneath. The only problem with this idea was that Hellhound didn’t need to breathe anymore. He simply punched himself through the sand trap and pulled himself out.

“Will, give me a hand,” ordered Daredevil, finding himself caught in between the Black Queen and Cadaver.

Sandman stretched out his miniature sand dune and then created giant hands that sprouted from it, clutching all three members of the Hellfire Cult in their grasps and immobilizing them completely. Daredevil wasted little time in turning his attention towards the two goblins. Unfortunately for the Exiles, the elder Osborn and his wayward son had abandoned the rest of their demonic partners to accomplish their real goal. All the Exiles knew that the goblins would be going for the Hellfire Club but they had to make sure the three other members of the Hellfire Cult were down before they could proceed further.

“Wasp, go after them,” ordered Sandman as he reformed his body from the sand dune. “They’re going for the Hellfire Club so they won’t be hard to find. The rest of us will secure these three and then follow you.”

“On it,” promised Wasp, zipping through the broken door of the complex and out into the night.

She was afraid and that fear gave her the extra adrenaline she needed to push herself harder and faster. She wasn’t afraid for herself though. She had faced death more than enough to get good at hiding the fear that came with such actions. She was afraid for Harry, afraid that there was nothing left of him to save. She had to get through to him though. Kate cared for him, probably more than she was ready to admit at this point. She wasn’t going to abandon him when he was lost in the dark. She was going to bring him home into the light, even if he would end up in someone else’s arms and not hers.

The Hellfire Club

Sebastian Shaw didn’t make a habit of being afraid. He was a powerful man, powerful enough to command respect and fear from everyone around him. No one scared Sebastian Shaw and if anyone did so, Shaw made sure they were no longer a threat to him. It was how he operated, how he ordered his life. He had everything that money could ever buy but there were rare, occasional moments when he felt the powerful grip of fear. This was such a moment because he knew the second he realized what Trevor Fitzroy could really do that he would be the death of all of them unless he was controlled. With that control now nothing but a fantasy, Shaw was terrified of what Fitzroy would do to him and the rest of the Inner Circle.

“Where is he?” asked Shaw as he cradled Emma’s shuddering body in his arms. “Emma, tell me where he is!”

“Everywhere,” whispered Emma hoarsely, the fear already claiming every corner of her mind. “Sebastian, we’ve made a horrible mistake. He’ll kill us all. We should’ve just left him alone. We should’ve . . .”

“We can control this,” declared Shaw, his need for power and control gripping him as tightly as the fear gripped Emma Frost’s heart. “Use your children and help Leland and I find him, Emma. Once we catch him, we can contain him and then he’ll be back in a cell and this time he’ll stay there.”

“We can’t find him!” snapped Emma.

“Maybe you’re just not looking hard enough,” suggested Fitzroy as he suddenly appeared and grabbed Emma by the arm, jerking her out of Shaw’s arms and right into his lethal touch. “I suggest you say goodbye to her, Shaw. Time isn’t on your side.”

“You need a good reminder of your place,” said Shaw, moving to strike Fitzroy.

“You starved me and kept me in a cage like I was an animal,” retorted Fitzroy, teleporting away from Shaw and then reappearing behind him, still clutching Emma and still sucking the life out of her. “Didn’t anyone teach you what happens when an animal gets free in your house, what it does after being treated that way?”

Shaw turned and tried to throw a haymaker but Fitzroy teleported again, keeping out of Shaw’s reach while he fed off Emma’s life force. By the time Shaw turned around again to confront Fitzroy, he pushed Emma’s corpse into Shaw’s arms and then teleported away. Sebastian Shaw stared into the lifeless eyes of the woman he loved and realized that this time the Hellfire Club wasn’t going to win. He had finally found someone who was better than him, more ruthless and cunning than he could ever hope to be. It would be only a matter of time before Fitzroy picked off the rest of the Inner Circle and the Hellions as well. It was over and there wasn’t a damn thing Shaw could do to stop it.

“What happened?” asked Sunspot as he came into the room with the rest of the Hellions not far behind him. “What happened to Miss Frost?”

“She’s dead,” mumbled Shaw, mentally still trying to process what had just occurred. “Fitzroy killed her.”

“Then I’m going to make him burn,” stated Sunspot angrily, shifting into his solar-powered form and letting the flames flare hot and bright. “Show me where he is and I’ll make sure he pays for what he did.”

“Find him,” ordered Shaw. “All of you fan out and find him. He’s still here in the Hellfire Club somewhere. He won’t leave until he takes out all of us. When you find him, kill him. Use whatever means at your disposal but you will kill him or you will die trying.”

The Hellions all nodded and turned to leave but Shaw grabbed Chamber by the wrist and made sure to hold him back while the rest of his teammates went on. The young Brit turned and gave Shaw a quizzical look.

‘Something I can do for you, sir?’ he inquired.

“Yes, most definitely,” replied Shaw, a evil grin forming on his face. “I require something from you.”

Chamber’s eyes went wide as Shaw plunged his hand into the open cavity in the boy’s chest. He tore through the material of Chamber’s costume and stuck his hand inside the roiling cauldron of energy. Shaw’s mutant power instantly began to absorb the energy that made up Chamber’s body. Shaw’s muscles swelled, bulging with power and ripping his clothes as they grew. He absorbed everything he could of Chamber, killing the boy in a matter of minutes.

“Now, Fitzroy,” muttered Shaw to himself as he watched the lifeless husk drop to the floor, “we’ll see just who is powerless and who isn’t.”

Norman Osborn had died a long time ago. In truth, maybe he was never alive in the first place. Maybe there was only a monster that wore Norman’s face and answered to his name. Yet there were instances when Devil-Goblin could feel emotions that Norman once felt. One of those emotions was particularly strong in the pit that was his heart. That emotion, of course, was pride.

Devil-Goblin looked at his son, the son he always should have had, and felt pride in his accomplishment. That sick sense of pride came with an appropriately sick sense of responsibility. It was time to start teaching his new son the family business. Tonight would be the first of many lessons that Devil-Goblin planned to give young Harry Osborn. It was important to not just destroy your enemies but annihilate them. It wasn’t enough to humble them or even defeat them. You had to crush them under your boot. You had to grind them into the dust just as they would do to you. Devil-Goblin knew this as a fact because the Hellfire Club were the people that taught it to him. Tonight, he would use them as an example in passing on that instruction to his son.

“This is what should’ve been ours, son,” said Devil-Goblin as he and his corrupted son flew towards the Hellfire Club. “I tried to overthrow Shaw with the help of the others but we couldn’t get it done. We weren’t powerful enough but now we’re more than a match for Shaw and his circle of pretenders.”

“We’ll make them pay,” promised Goblin, his mad grin now a mirror image of his father’s. “All who stand in our way are going to burn for their foolishness.”

“That’s my son,” laughed Devil-Goblin before zooming through the window he and the rest of the Cult had broken earlier that night when they first entered the building.

Goblin followed him in and father and son both surveyed the damage. Something else was going on here. They saw two corpses on the floor belonging to the White Queen and one of her students. Devil-Goblin let out a chuckle at the sight of the two bodies before moving out into the hallway with his son close behind him. Someone was helping him in his cause but Shaw’s head would be his and his alone. No one was going to deny him that prize no matter how powerful they were.

“Someone’s doing our job for us,” noted Goblin.

“Shaw!” shouted Devil-Goblin. “Come out and face me!”

The floor shook as something stepped out from one of the rooms further down the hall. Both goblins turned and looked at the hulking mass of muscle that was now Sebastian Shaw. Somehow, he must have absorbed a huge amount of energy all at once and it mutated his physique. It didn’t matter. Devil-Goblin already knew that his hellfire was toxic to Shaw when the leader of the Inner Circle absorbed it. It was time to give Shaw a very large dose of some very unhealthy energy.

“You think you’re more powerful than me, Osborn?” asked Shaw as he absorbed the volley of hellfire blasts that erupted from both goblins’ hands. The otherworldly energy didn’t do any harm to Shaw this time since he had already absorbed so much energy from killing Chamber. It would take more than that to burn out his newfound invulnerability.

Shaw roared and charged towards the two goblins. He tackled Devil-Goblin into a wall and started punching him in the ribs repeatedly. Harry blasted Shaw in the back with another hellfire bolt but he had other problems.

“I’m not going to abandon you, Harry,” promised Wasp, firing a round of sting blasts at Harry’s eyes and distracting him. “I care about you too much to let your father destroy you like this.”

“My father saved me,” retorted Goblin staggering towards the stairs and trying to get away from Wasp. He succeeded in backhanding her down the hallway, buying him a few moments to reorient himself.

“Your father turned you into a monster,” said Wasp as she returned to normal size. “Look at yourself, Harry. You’re everything you told yourself you’d never become.”

“I am everything I was too scared to become,” corrected Goblin. “I have attained the power I was always destined for.”

Wasp muttered a curse under her breath and flew towards Goblin again. In the background, she could hear the thunderous blows as Sebastian Shaw and Devil-Goblin slugged it out. Her teammates were still busy with the rest of the Hellfire Cult so for the moment she had to go it alone. It was going to be an extremely long night.

Next Issue: The Exiles are caught in the middle with enemies on all sides as “Raising Hell” concludes and you won’t believe what happens next.