Chapter Twenty-Three

Harry pulled away. "H-…how?"

His voice was strangled. "I…I saw you. Eight years ago. You…you were…"

"Dead?" The Goblin shook his head. "No. Close, but not dead."

He took a step back. "Just look at you. You're a young man now." A thin smile crossed his face. "Someone I can be proud of."

Harry stared at him, his face stiff and blank. The dim light shone in his eyes, glittered on tears.

Get away from him, I thought helplessly. Get out of here!

Harry turned away, blinking against the tears, and saw me. "Mayday," he whispered. The last hint of color in his face drained away. "Mayday!"

He leaped over a swath of debris and dropped to his knees beside me. "Mayday!" He grabbed my wrist, felt under my jaw. "Talk to me!"

He grabbed my shoulders and pulled me up. My head fell back. The room spun around dizzyingly and stopped on Anubis, standing motionless in front of the wreckage of the door.

"No…oh, God, no…please…" He was holding me, cradling my head, his face inches away and twisted with panic. "Mayday!"

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the Goblin watching him. A spasm rippled across his face, like a tiny seizure, and melted into a shadow of a sneer. "There's no need for any emotional displays. She's only paralyzed."

He turned away and walked slowly to where Harry's glider was hovering. He reached out and ran his hand over the surface. The metal rippled under his fingers. "Cendequatrium," he said. "Well done."

He circled the glider, examining it. "I see you didn't include the anterior blades on this model. Good idea. I remember those." He chuckled softly. "Went straight through me."

He looked up, smiling again. "I owe it all to Anubis, actually. He's a brilliant scientist, utterly brilliant. He was the one who developed the compounds that kept me alive after that little…incident."

Harry's eyes flickered to Anubis, back to his father. "You…" He swallowed. "All…all this time…he's been working for you?"

"Naturally." The Goblin tapped something on the glider's surface. The liquid metal fragmented and the glider started to fold in on itself. "I have too many enemies to risk being careless. Anubis created a neurochemical trigger that would activate if I sustained a wound that could be fatal. It reduced me to a near-death state while my body repaired itself." The glider finished compacting and dropped onto his palm. He folded his fingers around it. "Trust me, there aren't many things more unpleasant than waking up in a morgue."

I could feel Harry shaking. "I…I never knew…"

"Spider-Girl did," the Goblin said. "She found out nearly a week ago. Using a device you built, if I remember correctly." He raised an eyebrow sardonically. "Didn't she tell you?"

Harry's grip loosened.

The Goblin shook his head. "Of course she didn't." His lip curled. "She'd never take the risk."

He turned away, towards a painting I thought I'd seen before. "It's taken me a long time to arrange everything. There were so many variables to take into account. Her interference included," he said, his eyes still on the painting. I recognized it now. Goya. Saturno devorando a su hijo. "But I've succeeded, as I always do. You're back where you belong."

Something tingled at the base of my skull. I couldn't move but somehow I was feeling something, faint but getting stronger…

My spider-sense?

My mind whirled. My spider-sense was working again, and I could only think of one reason why: Anubis wasn't concentrating on me anymore. I was paralyzed; what could I do?

The Goblin turned back to Harry. "I'm telling you this to prove myself to you. Now that you're old enough to understand, to realize what I've accomplished."

He spread his arms. "I've rebuilt it. I've rebuilt it all. Everything we once had, wealth, power, more. The underworlds of every continent are in my debt. Laboratories all over the world are manufacturing my designs. I have dictators with all of their spies and armies groveling for just a glimpse of the technologies I've created." He lowered his arms. "And it's all been for you."

He smiled again. It didn't reach his eyes. "I never abandoned you. I've always looked out for you, protected you. When you were ready I arranged for my will to be found so you could receive your inheritance and learn the truth."

"But… but Aunt Beth," Harry choked out. "They tried to…you tried to—"

The Goblin cut him off. "She was no longer useful. I meant to do you a favor, to help you sever all ties to your old life. She would have been an unnecessary complication."

Harry's voice echoed in my head. I'd disappear into the system.

The pieces were falling together. Harry was too noticeable. The news about his inheritance and new life had been all over the papers for months. But if Beth McKay had died that night and Harry had gone to jail, after the media storm died down he would have become just another number, just another uniform. If someone manipulated the records and bribed enough people, he could vanish off the face of the earth and no one would have known.

And he'd have nothing to go back to.

"Why?" Harry whispered. "All of this…" He swallowed. "Why?"

"Why?"

The Goblin stared at him. A frown creased his forehead, as if he couldn't believe what he'd just heard. "Because you're my son," he said. "And I love you."

Harry shuddered. He looked away and squeezed his eyes shut. Tears leaked from between his eyelids.

"M-Mayday," he stammered. "Her family."

The Goblin's eyes narrowed. "There are some things I take personally," he said. A growl crept into his voice. "Attempts on my life are one of them."

Harry opened his eyes. The muscles in his face tightened into a corpselike mask.

The Goblin looked up, past Harry, at something only he could see. "Parker never should have crossed me. And soon he'll pay the price." A slow, malevolent smile split his face. "After watching the rest of his family go before him."

Complete, mind-numbing horror seeped over me like cold lead.

Harry lifted his head. "No," he whispered. "No. You can’t."

"Why not?" The Goblin tilted his head towards me, his smile warping into a smirk. "Because of her?"

Harry didn't answer.

The Goblin snorted. "What is she? A freak of nature, just like her father. Both random mutations that try to justify their existence with bleeding-heart rhetoric and a few futile acts of charity."

Out of nowhere something hit me with a jolt. I'd looked at Harry, then at the Goblin.

My eyes. I had moved my eyes.

My mind raced. My entire body felt like it was pinned under a thousand-pound weight, but the drug was wearing off, it had to be…

The Goblin shook his head. "You're better than that, Harry," he said. "Old attachments are irrelevant now that you're here. Now that you're ready to complete what you've already begun."

Harry stared at him. A rivulet of sweat trickled from under his hair. "Wh-what?"

Another spasm rippled across the Goblin's face. He twitched his head, almost as if dismissing something. His face arranged itself again into that threadlike smile. "The formula's still running through your blood. It gives you strength, speed. But that's not everything. They robbed you of something, Harry. She took it away from you."

His voice grew softer, more intense. "You wanted revenge on her for the crimes of her father, but think of the crime she committed. She killed your other half, took away your soul to suit herself and the masses of weaklings she claims to protect."

The thin smile cracked. The light glinted on his teeth. "But that can be remedied."

The Goblin leaned forward, his eyes fixed on Harry's. "I have the means. I can save you, resurrect what you were, who you were meant to be. My son, my heir."

His jaw clenched and his lips drew back in a grin, a snarl, a horrible combination. "And you can make her pay."

Harry's grip tightened. "No," he whispered. "No. Not Mayday."

The Goblin took a step forward and crouched down in front of us, inches away. My spider-sense wailed.

"It's hard, isn't it," he said softly. He reached for Harry's shoulder. Something glinted in his hand. "Just thinking about it."

Harry flinched. A drop of blood beaded on his neck. "What—"

The Goblin's hand tightened on Harry's shoulder. "But think about something else," he said. "Look at me, Harry."

Harry raised his head. "Think back," the Goblin said. "Remember that short time you had before she ruined you. Yes. You remember what it was like, don't you, son?"

The carpet prickled against the back of my right glove. Feeling was creeping back into my hands, out towards the tips of my fingers.

And if I could just bend my fingers…

The Goblin was still talking. His voice was soft, hypnotic. "You were invincible," he whispered. "Everything was yours. You were above all the rest, beyond them. You were something else, something new, and they were insignificant. They were bugs, bacteria, mindless drones scurrying through their meaningless little lives without a thought for anything greater, without even a clue that you were there and could obliterate them all like the vermin they are."

Harry blinked slowly, narrowed his eyes, as if he were trying to concentrate but somehow couldn't. "Hobgoblin," he murmured. "Not me."

"No, Harry. You. The true you." The Goblin's eyes gleamed. "You've been restrained for too long. The formula only released what was inside you, what you truly are. You fought with him because what he wanted didn't parallel the ideas they made you swallow, their morals, their laws."

Harry turned away. His teeth were gritted, his eyes squeezed shut. "I…"

The Goblin reached out and forced Harry's head up until he was staring straight into his eyes. "You know I'm telling the truth," he said. "He's still there. He'll never be gone. You can't wish him away just because he doesn't fit their standards. Who are they to say what's right and what isn't? We're not like them anymore."

Harry's voice sounded distant, dulled. "No," he whispered. "He… he wasn't me. He was a monster. He was—"

"Evil?" the Goblin interrupted. "Or you mean, like me?"

He shook his head, almost indulgently. "Good and evil are arbitrary definitions," he said. "More of their petty moralizing. But real life is never that simple. The world isn't the Manichean place they'd have you believe it is."

He waved vaguely towards the dark paintings on the walls. "We're all beings of light and shadow, chiaroscuro. Some parts of us are dominant, some are subordinate. Everyone, you, me, even your holier-than-thou little friend here…" He jerked his head towards me. "…Are composed of those different facets." A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. "It's just a little more obvious in some of us."

Harry's breathing had slowed. His eyes were dulled, dark. His pupils were dilated.

An image flashed through my brain. The glint in the Goblin's hand, the blood on Harry's neck. He'd done something, injected something…

The scream was only in my head. Harry! Wake up! Don't listen to him!

"Trust me, Harry. I'm your father. I wouldn't lie to you," the Goblin whispered. "I know what you're feeling, I know you're scared. I was scared too, at first, but I didn't have to be. And neither do you."

Harry's face had gone blank, his grip was weakening, but those soft, slithering words wouldn't stop. "Think. Remember who you truly are. You can still feel him inside you, waiting. Don't be afraid of him. He's you. Embrace him. He'll free you. Once you make the change there's no remorse, no more questioning, no more pain. You're purged of human weakness."

I could tense my arms. Pins and needles were prickling through the muscles in my legs. Harry! Don't listen to him! Wake up! WAKE UP!

The Goblin smiled. "No, Harry. I'm not evil," he said. "I'm free."

The voice replayed itself in my mind, over and over, and finally sank in.

No. It couldn't be. No one, not even Hobgoblin could say what he had said, so calmly, so coldly. But he wasn't like Hobgoblin; I remembered Hobgoblin. He had been a seething, out-of-control creature of threats and hate and animal rage. But even as scared as I'd been, when I'd seen him lying crumpled and wounded there had been something to understand, a creature that was horrible but still somehow human…but no human being could actually think what he had just said, believe that…it was too warped, sick, twisted…

Insane.

"Trust me, son," the Goblin said softly. "You do trust me, don't you?"

Harry didn't answer. His face was still, his eyes half-closed.

And then, slowly, his head sank in a nod.

Harry! Harry, no! The weight was lifting, but slowly, much too slowly…

"You remember," the Goblin murmured. "You remember what you lost."

Harry's head sank again.

The Goblin's fingers closed around Harry's shoulder like claws. "And you want it back. You'd do anything to get it back," he whispered. "Wouldn't you?"

Something stirred beneath Harry's deadened face. A gleam dawned in his eyes, flickered and spread until his entire face twisted into a vicious snarl. The voice that came out of his mouth wasn't Harry's. It was low, harsh, an animal growl.

"Yes."

No. The thought became a scream. No! Harry!

The Goblin nodded. "But there's still one thing holding you back," he said. "You know what it is."

Harry was silent.

"But why let her?" the Goblin murmured. "What is she to you? Who is she to drag you down? If she were gone you wouldn't hesitate. You wouldn't have any doubts."

I could feel my legs. I could clench my jaw.

Harry!

The Goblin's voice was stronger now. "Look at her. Look at her now."

Harry lowered his head. Fear froze my blood. It wasn't Harry holding me, staring down at me. It was someone else, someone I'd seen before, on a rooftop, on a rig, in my nightmares.

"She's the one who destroyed you. She's the one who lied to you," the Goblin breathed. "But look at her. She's helpless. It would be so easy to end it now. You could snap her neck like a—"

Harry flinched as if he'd been shocked. His eyes widened, awake, horrified.

The Goblin drew back. An ugly look darted across his face and vanished just as quickly. He started talking faster. "Think, Harry. Look at what I've done. Look at what you've done. Think of what we could accomplish together," he said. "Think of what we could do!"

He held out his hand. "Come with me, son. I'm here for you now. I'll help you, guide you. Trust me."

"No."

Harry's arms tightened around me, so hard I could barely breathe. "No." His voice was louder. "No." A scream ripped out of his throat. "No! No! No!"

Harry leaped up, swaying on his feet, his face dead white and drawn. "You tried to kill Aunt Beth. You killed Ladyhawk. And now you want me to…" His voice rose hysterically. "You think…you think I'd…"

"No."

The Goblin rose to his feet. "It's my fault. I've overestimated you again."

The ugly look crept back over his face and deepened. "I should have known you'd never have the strength. Just like you never had the guts to avenge me."

Harry staggered back as if he had stabbed him. I could feel his heart hammering through his armor.

The Goblin shook his head, never taking his eyes off him. "But do you know what I did when I found out?"

He took a step forward. Harry backed away.

The Goblin kept coming. "When I learned you'd decided your worst enemy was more important to you than your own father?"

Harry's back hit the wall. The Goblin stopped.

"I forgave you," he said. "After all, you're my son."

Air wheezed into Harry's lungs. "Maybe I'm your son." His fingers dug into my arms. "But I'm not like you."

The Goblin watched him calmly. "No, you're not like me," he said. "Not yet."

He jerked his head at Anubis. "Take them both below."

The weight was gone. I could move.

I took a deep breath and gritted my teeth."Guess again, Gobby."

I twisted out of Harry's arms, fired two weblines at the Goblin's legs and wrenched with all my strength. The Goblin hurtled away and smashed into the wall in an explosion of shelves and paintings. He slid to the floor, head sagging onto his chest as pieces of wood and sheetrock bounced off his shoulders. He didn't move.

I didn't wait. I whipped around and grabbed Harry's arm. "Come on!"

Anubis slowly stepped in front of the destroyed wall. His arms hung loosely at his sides, but his hands were clenched around the hilts of twin razored sickles.

A laugh started behind me, low and soft but growing louder with every second until it was a horrible, screaming cackle that shuddered through the air and my bones.

I turned around. I knew what I would see.

The Goblin was still sprawled in the crater where he had landed, his head thrown back, convulsing with laughter. In one movement he bounded away from the wall and landed in a crouch. Armor gleamed through the gashes in his suit.

"I'll give you points for the ambush, Junior." He straightened. "We'll have to rework that paralytic."

In that split second I was frozen again, as if the drug had come rushing back through my blood. This wasn't a nightmare. In front of me was someone worse than Hobgoblin or Black Widow or even Anubis, someone who could say what he had said and mean it, believe it, who took what he wanted and killed because he could. A psychopath. A murderer. A monster.

Dad barely beat him. If Dad barely stopped him, then I don't have a chance…

I clenched my fists. Harry. No matter what happened, I couldn't let him get Harry.

The Goblin smirked. "How adorable."

My mouth was so dry it was all I could do to choke out the words. "Stay away from him."

He snorted. "Oh, I see. You're going to protect him like you protected your family."

He started walking, his hands behind his back, circling me like a predator. "No smart remark ready, May Parker?" he asked. "Odd. Your father would've tossed out ten by now."

He shook his head mockingly. "Or maybe you're just a sad imitation," he said. "Your father at least had something to say when he saw me, even though it was just the usual spiel of threats and promises the defeated use to give themselves illusions of strength." He paused. "Well, I think that was what it was. He was having trouble talking with that clamp around his neck."

Rage surged through me like lightning. "You…!"

I whipped up my hands and fired web straight at his face. The Goblin jerked away. The web missed his face by a fraction of an inch, but I was already charging at him, pulling back my fist…

Faster than I could blink the Goblin's hand snapped shut around my throat. I grabbed his wrist, choking, fighting to pry him off. From a distance I could hear Harry's voice, screaming something I couldn't understand, but the Goblin's fingers kept closing, crushing…

He laughed softly, his lips pulling back in a hideous grin. "Never fought a real goblin before, have you?"

He hurled me away. Before I could websling the wall crashed into my back. Something cracked in my ribs.

Get up, I thought numbly. He was stronger than me, much too strong, but I had to get up, I had to fight, no matter what happened…

"Schoolyard tactics won't cut it here, May," the Goblin said. He raised his arms. Two pairs of huge hooked blades ripped through the forearms of his jacket. "You're in the major league now."

My spider-sense shrieked. I jerked away just as a blade slashed the air a millimeter from my face. The Goblin grabbed me and slammed my head against the wall. White flashes exploded in front of my eyes. I swung around whipped my elbow into his head. The Goblin stumbled back.

I shoved myself away from the wall and landed on my feet. I couldn't let him see how afraid I was, couldn't let him know…

I gulped in a lungful of air. Searing pain stabbed through my chest as I shouted, "So you're a real goblin, huh? Wow. You're tougher than I thought. I guess I figured someone with your track record would be more worried about playing with knives."

The Goblin's smile evaporated. "So you have inherited your father's mouth."

He lunged. "And his stupidity!"

A split second later I was enveloped in a tornado of flashing blades, dodging, kicking, punching, my heartbeat roaring in my ears, pain spiking through my chest, panic ripping through my brain. He's too strong, he's too fast, but I can't lose, if I lose I'll die, we'll all die, he's going to kill us…

Harry's voice cut the air. "No!" he screamed. "Stop!"

The Goblin's fist smashed into my face. I reeled back and sprang out of the way just in time to keep from being skewered on a broken steel beam. The Goblin charged at me, slashing at my head. I caught his wrist, twisted around and heaved. He hit the floor and kicked my legs out from under me. I slammed my hand flat against the floor and threw a scissor kick at his chest. Can't lose, can't lose, can't lose…

The Goblin caught my ankle and hurled me away. The side of the huge oak desk crashed into my spine. Pain lanced through my chest. I smothered a scream.

The Goblin stood a few feet away, arms at his sides, smiling faintly. "Skill comes with age," he said. "Too bad you're going to die so young."

I grabbed a corner of the desk and flung it at him. The Goblin leaped into the air, pushed off from the spinning desk like a springboard and slammed into me, sending us both flying straight through the destroyed wall.

I hit the floor and skidded into the wreckage of a robot. Bone ground in my ribs. Through a haze of agony I could see the room, the same one where the robots had attacked. Pale light from the canyon outside gleamed on shards of glass and twisted metal, and on the pool of blood where Ladyhawk had fallen. Just blood.

Ladyhawk was gone.

A blade gouged the floor an inch from my head. I swung my hand around and webbed his arm to the floor. I stumbled to my feet just as the Goblin ripped free and bounded up again, his face contorted, teeth bared in a gargoyle snarl. "I'm getting tired of this, Junior."

My heartbeat roared in my ears. "Likewise, old man!"

He whipped up his arms. All four blades shot at me like boomerangs. I threw myself backwards. The blades whizzed over me as my back hit the floor. I pulled my legs in and sprang up again, just as my spider-sense screamed a warning and I saw the grenade, flying straight at my head.

There was no time to think. My fingers closed around the metal grenade and my shoulder wrenched in its socket as I spun with the catch and hurled it back at him.

The grenade exploded in midair. A roar of heat and noise smashed me off my feet and into a heap of rubble. My muscles gave way and I hit the floor.

I…can't…lose…

I couldn't breathe. My lungs had seized up and I was choking on air. Something hot dripped into my eye.

He's going to kill them…

A wisp of air trickled into my lungs. I dragged my hands up and braced them against the floor. Shreds of my mask and strands of sweat-soaked hair hung around my face as I pushed myself up. Fat drops of blood splattered against the wreckage in front of my face and over something else, a thick cinder-covered disc. Doc's antidote.

I shoved myself to my feet. The Goblin was almost twenty feet away, slumped brokenly against the wall. The remnants of his jacket smoldered against the suit of black armor beneath it.

Harry dropped in front of him, blocking my view. "Stop," he gasped. His face was taut with anguish. "Please."

The Goblin raised his head. "Thank you, son."

He climbed to his feet. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. "I'm glad there's still some sense of family left in you."

Harry froze. His body went rigid as if his armor had solidified, as if he couldn't move…

Before I could even think to react an invisible vise clamped shut around me, locking me in place. A jackal-headed shadow slid over the wall, coming straight towards us.

"A minor precaution, Harry," the Goblin said. "No sense in waiting for you to have yet another change of heart."

That bone-chilling gaze turned on me. "And as for you…"

Anubis was coming closer. Something appeared in the shadow's fist, a needle-thin blade.

The Goblin wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. The streak of blood smeared across his face like a livid scar. "I suppose I can make do with the rest of your family."

The blade lashed out. Ice-cold pain pierced the back of my neck and suddenly the vise was gone. My legs gave way as if someone had cut them out from under me. I could feel my blood roaring in my veins, burning like acid, going too fast…

Diaboli,Anubis droned. Your friend may have survived, but you will not be so fortunate.

"No," I gasped. My throat was closing. "No-aaaaaah!"

Agony shot through me like a sword in my gut. Every muscle in my body was on fire.

The antidote! Get the antidote!

I slammed my hand against the wall and dragged myself up. My legs were blocks of lead. Antidote. It was…where I had crashed…

Slow footsteps slid over the floor. Anubis. He was coming after me.

My legs were blocks of lead. I stumbled and collapsed into the rubble. The disc was still there, six inches from my fingertips, six inches too far…

My insides heaved. Blood was welling in my mouth. But the antidote was there, right in front of me…

I forced my fingers to bend. Webbing jetted from my wrist and the disc flew into my hand. I heaved my arm up and slammed it against the outside my leg. It would work. It had to work.

My heart lurched in my chest. Bolts of pain crackled up my spine, into my skull. I screamed.

The footsteps stopped. A placebo, Anubis said. Your friend Dr. Hiller's antibodies programmed themselves to combat a harmless chemical.

The words melted into a ghost of a laugh. You do not think that I would have so charitably provided a means to create a true antidote to my poison, do you?

The laugh went on, louder and louder until my skull was ringing with a soundless voice that was changing, becoming more alive, more human…

Yes, Anubis said. Rather…shirty thing for me to do, wasn't it?