Mysterious Cairo (36 page)

From every nook and cranny of the "Alley of Death" came the assassins of the Crescent Blade. Yishara turned to protect the old man just in time to see him remove his beard and robe, revealing the red uniform of his order and cackling wildly. The Shroud hoped to parley first, to give him and Yishara time to think of a plan, but they had stepped into the iron fist of the Crescent Blade and the fingers were closing like a fist. Scimitars were swinging, loose ends of turbans and sashes whipped with the motion of their bearers, and malevolent eyes surged forth from the eyes of ten members—two hands — of the ancient guild.

The "old man" struck first, swinging his scimitar in a wide arc at Raven's torso. She excellently parried the blow with her talons, but was struck from behind by the pommel of another dancing demon's sword. Gunner drew his Luger and fired twice at a cart-wheeling acrobat who ended in a bloody heap at the end of his tumble. A second killer maneuvered into the opening and slipped in close, managing to catch the barrel of the pistol with his scimitar and sending the firearm spinning wildly into the muddy Cairo street.

The heroes fought back-to-back. There was no time for a renewed offensive; every ounce of energy was spent parrying or dodging the deadly blades of the nine remaining thugs.

"You will not leave this alley alive, Shroud!" cried one of the assassins as he whipped past. The taunt was delivered to catch him off guard, and his companion exploited its success by slashing the black material of Gunner's right sleeve. From the injury poured forth a wash of red, as blood mixed with the cold rain. Hayes recoiled slightly from the pain and watched as the nimble thug wiped the blood from the blade onto a handkerchief secured in his sash. It confirmed their suspicions.

Yishara was having similar luck. The assassins didn't seem to be going for the kill. Rather, they seemed to be playing with their prey with the utmost confidence. In a momentary lull, she was able to lash out with her whip and smack one of the killers in the soft white of the eye. The man screamed out in pain and ran unsteadily into another alley, presumably to get away. Yishara smirked at one of her attackers, and the man became furious, charging her carelessly. In a moment she had parried his weapon with her right talon and sunk her left deep within his fleshy gut. He came to a sudden stop, raised his head just long enough to glower with contempt, and died.

The assassins were taking their work more seriously now. There were seven fingers left, easily enough to finish off the two heroes. But the brief confusion allowed the Shroud a chance to grab the outer folds of his cloak, and flash it open to the larger clump of thugs gathered on his side. His maniacal laugh was so sudden, so intense, and so loud that even Raven was startled. The men before him had been warned of his power, and one managed to avert his gaze in time, but two others had caught a glimpse of the velvet blackness and their morbid curiosity compelled them to stare into its icy depths as one looks at the scene of a terrible accident. Both men began to scream.

One dropped his sword and ran screaming into the alley which had provided an escape for his blinded companion. The other man drove at the hideous things which he saw within the death shroud, and attempted to slay them with his sword. Gunner used his cape as a matador, and drove the man into its folds. By the time the assasin managed to untangle himself, Raven had already slit his throat with an easy swipe of her metallic claws.

The thugs on Raven's side took the opportunity to charge into melee and she was quickly back to the task of parrying their furious blows. The Shroud grabbed the scimitar of the fallen killer and put his back to her once again, expecting a similar reaction from the assassins remaining to his front. But when he looked forward again, there was only one cutthroat remaining.

He stood with both hands on the pommel of his scimitar, the point touching the muddy lane before him. His head was cocked so that his narrow eyes had to peer upwards at the black-cloaked figure before him. Gunner grasped the edges of the cloak again and started to raise them to the figure before him, ready to enact its horrible powers. The figure only shook his head.

"That tattered relic will not work on me, you doomed fool. Everyone knows that once you have looked into the cloak you are forever immune to its powers."

The right side of Gunner's lip curled upwards. In a grumbling, sarcastic voice he replied, "Now who told you that?"

Suddenly, he raised the edges of the death shroud, showing the assassin the full length of its icy blackness. The killer's face shook with terror, and his eyes widened into full moons reflected upon a rippling pond. The scimitar shook in his trembling hands like the bough of tree in a fierce storm, and eventually tumbled from his grip to stick point first in the muck before him. His mind reeled at whatever Hell he saw within the mind-altering material of the Shroud's hungry cloak, and he collapsed into the safer haven of unconsciousness. With a wet thump he fell backwards, sending thick ropes of mud spattering behind him.

"If you're
quite
finished now, I could use some help!" came a panicky voice from behind him. Yishara was still repelling the frantic blows of the three remaining fingers of the second hand. Gunner could see scores of cuts and gashes in the flesh of her arms and shoulders. Her wounded side had a gash in the fabric, but the bandage still held.

The Shroud grabbed the nearby scimitar and swung it at the nearest thug. It sank deep into the meat of his shoulder. The other two growled angrily and seemed about to retreat. Yishara used their confusion to once again slip in an all-or-nothing shot at each of their throats. With an oxygen-gasping "Glack!" the two thieves slumped to the ground, gurgling in their blood and the grimy rain.

The Shroud watched the men die, and saw the one he had wounded hobble down the alley. He turned to the limp form of the assassin who had challenged the power of the cloak. He knelt beside him, pointing for Raven to hold his arms, and saw that the assassin was beginning to awaken from whatever recess his injured mind had dragged him to.

Before he had finished opening his eyes, the Shroud was in his face, "Who hired you? And what hole is the rest of your rat pack crawling into?"

The assassin recovered slightly, stiffening his resolve. "Kill me now, Yankee. You will get no information from this mouth."

The cloak draping about the Shroud's shoulders seemed to move of its own volition, nearly jumping with anticipation. The eyes of the assassin widened once again and his cheeks flushed pale. "It is rumored that one who has looked into that . thing is thereafter immune to its powers. I see that this is a lie."

"I know. I started that rumor."

Yishara turned her head to the horrible laughter which emanated from somewhere near the kneeling figures. She was never sure if it had come from the prisoner, the man, or from someplace else, some place deep within the velvety folds of the death shroud.

* * *

Ten minutes later, Yishara and Gunner had cleaned off the worst of the mud and the blood and were heading to an abandoned building near the Temple of Osiris. The assassins left in the "Alley of Death" were headed for the lands of Osiris.

It didn't take them long to find the secret closet door, but the only thing that greeted them within the hideout's depths were the severed heads of three assassins. Raven noticed that one of them was missing an eye.

The muddy room spoke of thirty or more assassins having dwelled here, and the heroes knew that the fleeing villains couldn't have gotten far. The Shroud grabbed Raven by the arm and dragged her up the stairway. "Quickly, they couldn't have had time to cover their tracks!"

Yishara's nicks and cuts pained her under Gunner's grip, and her side felt like it was on fire. But she shirked it off, saying "But the rain! It will wash them away almost as fast as they can make them!"

"Then we must hurry!" He still wasn't sure who had hired the assassins, but the killer who had tested the cloak had told him where they were supposed to deliver the bloodstained handkerchiefs if the hideout was compromised, and that was almost as good. He also guessed that the guild was heading there now in an attempt to warn or protect their employer from their bumbling.

Outside, Gunner and Yishara quickly found a gaggle of tracks leading towards the rich merchant's district.

* * *

Shocktroop patrols were thicker there than in any other section of Cairo, and while neither hero doubted that the Pharaoh cared little about the activities of the Crescent Blade, and perhaps even hired their services from time to time, the soldiers of the Empire would be obliged to stop any large group of armed men moving through the streets of the upscale merchant's area. This meant that if the clan was sticking together, and the Shroud thought that they would, they would have to use the rooftops.

The muddy prints leading from one roof top to another confirmed their suspicions. It took them only twenty minutes to locate the assassins.

It was a large office building in uptown Cairo. Raven and the Shroud were perched upon the fourth story of an uncompleted structure and could peer directly into a heavily windowed third floor of the adjacent building, where twenty or more slayers of the Crescent Blade were standing as if at attention. It looked as if someone was addressing them, giving them orders on how best to defend the building, but that person remained unseen.

Hayes had believed that tonight's chase would have led them to one of the many temples located in Cairo. He was sure that the cult's employer was going to use the blood of a hero in some arcane ritual designed to enslave or hex the unwillingly donator. But now he was in the most modern section of Cairo. Most of the offices here had transformed to the axioms of the Nile Empire. Buildings of glass and steel became edifices of brown stone and sand-stained windows. The one occupied by the Crescent Blade was such a building. Ledges and simple engravings decorated the areas between the floors, and a good number of seagulls and pigeons called them home. Far below, an occasional car of varying technology level passed by, its headlights playing off the cluttered and dirty sidewalks. The whole area spoke of slow progress and struggling financial empires. Overall, it was a strange place for a religious ceremony.

Raven was getting impatient and stood suddenly still. She walked out as far as possible on a girder, its length overhanging the city street below, and reached into a deep pocket of her new cloak. From it she withdrew a fist-sized metal device, and began to manipulate it so that it formed, to the Shroud's surprise, a grappling hook. Attached to a loop of metal at the far end was a thin but sturdy strand of nylon cord.

"Where did you get that?" Gunner smiled.

She grinned, and pointed at the Cyberpapal seal imprinted on one of the blades. The thief who had once carried this gizmo, the criminal known as Midnight, would not be needing a grappling hook where he had gone.

With practiced aim, Yishara whirled the hook in a tight circle and threw it with unusual strength at the window two levels above the floor occupied by the Crescent Blade and their mysterious employer. The iron hook smashed through the glass and caught on something obscured by the darkness of the room. Raven gave the rope a tug and nodded at the Shroud who joined her on the precarious beam and wrapped the nylon cord about both their wrists. Taking the lithe heroine in his arms, the Shroud pushed off mightily and swung out over the near empty street below.

With a mighty crash, Yishara and Gunner Hayes swung through the plate glass window of the third floor. Raven landed nimbly on her feet, untangling herself from the Shroud's clumsier entrance, and instantly shed her cloak. The Shroud had caught his right shin on the window frame and it was bleeding heavily. But the sight before his eyes was what stunned him the most. Standing on a long, narrow platform, surrounded by tables of bunsen burners, pyrex glass, and petri dishes was none other than ...
Dr. Mangler!

In Mobius' realm, science had taken on a whole new aspect. Things that were considered impossible before, such as x-ray goggles, invisibility belts, and jetpacks, could be built now with the huge influx of the reality-altering possibility energy of the Pharaoh and his Darkness Device.

Doctor Mangler was one of the leading "weird scientists" and also, a super-villain. His mad, genetic creations had often been turned loose upon the streets of Cairo, and it had been the Shroud who had dealt with them on more than one occasion. Over the months, Gunner had managed to discover the identity of their creator and had even seen a photograph or two of the mad scientist, but he had never met him face to face. He was taller and thinner than Gunner would have thought from his pictures. There was no hair on his head and only a thick pair of glasses resting on a hawk-like nose. His long, white labcoat was spattered with black smudges and red blotches.

The room was rectangular and about twenty feet wide and fifty feet long. The wall farthest from the Shroud held the entrance and the platform occupied by Dr. Mangler. Between the platform and the perpendicular wall to the Shroud's right were ten man-sized cylinders. They were glass, apparently, colored a dark, metallic green. The doors were shut tight and Gunner figured that they probably housed the scientist's most recent experiments. Filling the remainder of the room were long tables and shelves covered in boiling, bubbling, and burning apparatus. The only open space was occupied by the assassins of the Crescent Blade.

"Dr. Mangler," he growled.

The evil genius lowered his startled brow into a mocking grimace. "Why, yes, and you must be that horrible Shroud who has been destroying my playful children. Well I'm afraid you've saved us quite a bit of trouble young man. My nimble employees were just about to go looking for you and your little girl-friend."