Natasha Romanoff decided that for her next vacation, she was going to Disneyworld.

That decision was prompted by the discovery that her current vacation spot, Las Vegas, had become popular for vampires. This was due to Guiseppi Santoni, a centuries-old vampire who had decided to open a casino in Vegas. He figured as long as he and his undead bretheren maintained a low-profile about their…habits…why shouldn’t they have a place to gather and have fun?

But Santoni had noticed Natasha Romanoff visiting his casino, and had decided he wanted to feast on the famous ex-spy’s blood. He used his vampiric abilities to seduce her, but at the last moment she had realized what he was. She escaped from his office to the casino floor, where she killed two of his bodyguards (also vampires). Forgetting all his hard work, Santoni called for the vampires to reveal themselves, and freely feast n the humans in the town. He then told Natasha, to add sport to the chase, to…

“Run.”

Natasha swung the broken stool leg she had been holding at Santoni, but he shattered it to splinters with a swipe of his arm. She immediately took off in the opposite direction, heading for the stairwell that would take her to the underground parking garage. Her Black Widow gear was stowed in her room, along with her Avengers communicator. She figured that if the city were to have a chance she would need to contact super-powered help. She burst through the stairwell door and began quickly ascending.

Santoni was chuckling to himself as the vampires in the crowd began attacking people. While it had been nice hiding out all these years, it had been boring. He was ready to become a predator again. With his experience and finances, perhaps he could even become lord of vampires. Yes, there was no stopping him now.

Then he felt it. Not only him, but all the other vampires in the area. They stopped their attacks and turned as one in the same direction…to the west. As one, almost all of them took to the skies, transforming into bats and heading westward as the humans in the casino scattered and found any refuge they could.

Not all the vampires took off, however. Santoni was still there, his mouth twisted into a snarl, his fists clenched. A few dozen others were also still there, gathering towards their master.

“I don’t care if HE’S back. His time is past *!” Santoni said through gritted teeth. He then pointed to the vampires gathering toward him. “And all of you belong to me! I turned you into what you are! You shall obey ME! You will do what I want. And what I want first is to have Romanoff brought back to me.”

* (As to “he” is, check out M2K’s West Coast Avengers #23.)

Natasha continued to sprint up the stairs until she reached the fourth floor. She was unaware of the (relatively) good fortune of most of the vampires leaving Las Vegas, so her main concern was contacting SHIELD or The Avengers or whomever to protect the people of this city. Urgency was needed.

But so was caution. She cracked the door to her floor open slightly, since she had no idea what to expect on the other side. Her room was five doors to the right of the stairwell door (always have quick access to an exit, she had learned many years ago). Through the sliver-thin crack of the open door, she saw two men, dressed in very tasteful suits like all of the staff of this hotel/casino wore, standing directly in front of the door to her room. They were talking amongst themselves.

“I can’t believe we’re stuck here. She isn’t going to show up here. She probably took off down the strip,” said the first, a tall, handsome, blonde.

The other, a little shorter with black hair and a face that was a bit rat-like with his pointed nose, responded. “Yeah, but if this is where Santoni wants us, this is where we’ll be. And if you’re like me, that lousy call to the west is screwin’ up my senses. I can’t smell any of the blood right now. It’s like having a cold or something.”

Natasha eased the door closed.

“Call to the west?” she wondered. “At least it seems they can’t track me now.” But she knew it was better to avoid as much confrontation as possible at this point. She contemplated for the briefest of moments, then climbed the stairs to the next floor. She again cracked the door to the hallway just slightly, and peered in. No one was in view. She opened the door just enough to poke her head through and checked to the left of the door. Again, no one. She entered the hallway cautiously, senses alert. She needed entry into one of these rooms, but she had lost her bag at the start of all this, along with the lockpicks she carried in it. Natasha could have kicked one of the doors in, but she was afraid that might attract too much attention.

Right then, the sound of a door opening to her left grabbed her attention.

George Murphy was a slightly balding, slightly overweight, and slightly tipsy. This was his first trip to Vegas and he was having a great time. He was ahead (slightly) in the casinos, and several beautiful women had flirted with him (George hadn’t caught on yet that these women were employees of the hotel and paid to show interest in its patrons). He had come back to his room an hour ago to shower and change into some fresh clothes (George was a sweater, and it was quite hot here in Nevada) for a late dinner.

Now, refreshed and ready to try to find some ‘real action’ (wink wink nudge nudge), he walked out of his room, dropped his room keycard into his pocket, tuned toward the elevator, and was promptly run into by somebody.

“Hey!” he exclaimed, ready to add “why don’tcha watch where yer going?” when he saw that it was a beautiful woman. Not just a beautiful woman. Probably the most beautiful and exotic looking woman he had ever seen.

“Oh! I am so sorry.” The woman spoke with an accent that just increased her attractiveness. George figured she must be German or Romanian or Russian or something like that. “I was not paying attention to where I was going,” she said,

George flashed what he thought was his most sophisticated looking smile at her. In reality, he just looked slightly creepy. “Think nothing of it, my dear. I’m sure the fault was mine.” He was trying very hard to sound suave. “Coming in or going out? F-for the night, I mean.”

The woman smiled a smile that made George melt. “I was going to turn in for the evening, but perhaps I shall just ah, freshen up, and be downstairs at the roulette table in…twenty minutes?”

George just stood there for a minute, trying to gather the courage to ask her to join him, when it finally dawned on him that she was subtly asking him out. “Oh,” he said as the lightbulb went off in his head. “Oh! Oh, yes! Twenty minutes! Roulette table! Perhaps I, um, will see you there.”

“Perhaps you shall,” the woman said, as she brushed her fingers across his cheek. George felt a thrill go through him. He turned and headed onto the nearby elevator. As the doors closed, he saw the woman wave at him. He waved back, but the doors had already closed, and the elevator descended.

Natasha inserted the keycard she had stolen from the fat, balding man’s pocket when she had run into him into the slot on the man’s hotel room door. The little light on the door turned from red to green and Natasha entered. .She quickly crossed the room to the door to the balcony the rooms in this hotel had. As she did so, she ripped the bottom two-thirds of her dress off so she could move her legs more freely. Natasha also noted that her room faced the above ground parking garage where her car was housed. She opened the door and stepped out into the warm Las Vegas night.

She looked over the edge of the small balcony. Without hesitation, she climbed over the edge, and dangled by her fingertips five stories above the ground. She released her grip, and fell to the next floor’s balcony, grabbing the ledge to stop her fall. She climbed back onto the interior of the balcony. She dusted her hands off. Her room was three rooms to the left, so she began climbing the barriers between the balconies until she reached the balcony outside her room.

She peeked inside. No one that she could see was inside. She tugged at the outer door handle of the door. Locked. But this was an ordinary latch lock, cheap and easy to break. She gripped the handle and pulled firmly. The latch snapped audibly, but not too loudly. Natasha doubted the guards outside the room’s door would have heard anything. She quietly slid the door open, and stepped inside. She quickly grabbed her suitcase off the floor and put it on the bed. She opened it and tossed out all the clothes and accoutrements onto the bed. She then tripped the hidden switch that opened the false bottom of the suitcase. She undressed, tossing the ruined dress aside, and climbed into the Black Widow costume she pulled out of the suitcase. She snapped on her ‘Widow’s Bite’ bracelet onto her left wrist, and then her ‘Widow’s Line’ bracelet to her right.

The Black Widow reached again into the suitcase, looking for her Avengers communicator, but was unable to find it. She couldn’t think of where it could be, which angered her.

“Sloppy sloppy sloppy! It is amazing you have lived this long, woman,” she thought angrily. She paused, realizing something was amiss. She creeped back to the balcony, and peered over the edge. There was nothing going on at street level, other than the usual night life of Las Vegas. No vampires attacking helpless people, no people running in terror…nothing unusual at all. Nothing in this case was good, of course, but she was quite confused.

The Black Widow did not like being confused.

Turning and reentering the hotel room, The Widow grabbed a chair that was pulled up to a small desk and tipped it over. With a swipe from her arm, she broke off the forward legs of the chair and picked up the broken shafts of wood. She approached the door to the hallway.

The rat-like guard looked up suddenly.

“You hear that?” he asked his partner. “From in the room?”

He reached for his universal keycard which would open any of the doors in the hotel, when the door to Natasha’s room swung inward. The blonde man, standing a bit to the side of his partner saw something come flying out of the room and embed itself in the rat-like man’s chest. With only a grunt, the man fell to the ground and shriveled, like a corpse that had been dead for some time.

The Black Widow stepped out of the room and turned toward the blonde man, who was still in shock at what happened. In Natasha’s hand was jagged stake of wood. She leapt at the man, the sharp, broken end of the wood aimed at his heart. However, he twisted just enough so that the wood stabbed into his side. With a snarl of pain and rage, he thrust both hands out, knocking The Black Widow back a dozen feet. She landed and rolled nimbly to her feet.

The blonde man grabbed the stake in his side and pulled it out. It exited with a wet ‘shlurp’ sound. He threw the stake aside and looked back at The Widow. He bared his fangs at Natasha and hissed.

“You had your one shot, woman! Now prepare to—“

The Black Widow shot him in the throat with her Widow’s line, the metal barb at the end piercing through the back of his neck. Stunned, he did not react as Natasha ran and leapt over him this time, looping her line around his head like a lariat. She placed her left foot on his back and pulled hard on the line. The thin nylon cord of the line acted like a garrote, cutting through his undead flesh and bone. His head rolled off his body to the left, while his body fell to the right. Whatever ichor that passed for the creature’s blood began to pour out onto the carpet.

The Black Widow retracted her line back into its housing. Just then, the elevator door down the hall opened and three men in tasteful suits stepped out. They stopped when they saw the scene of carnage.

“It’s her!” one screamed and all three began to advance on her.

Natasha jumped back through the doorway into her room. She had read The Avengers’ profile on vampires, of course, and knew they could not enter a room unless they had been invited in. This would give her time to break the rest of the legs off the chair and use them against this new threat.

The three vampires stood outside the doorway, paused a moment, then the first took a step inside. Natasha took a step back.

“But I did not invite you in. How--?” she puzzled.

The one who had stepped inside already showed a toothy grin. “What…you think we wouldn’t have had somebody invite us into every room in this hotel when we first built it?”

The Widow knew that she could handle two of these creatures with surprise on her side, but wasn’t so sure she could take three when they were prepared for her in these close quarters.

She took off toward the balcony, sprinting without hesitating toward the edge and leaped out into open air. Four stories over the Las Vegas street and free falling. Doing a somersault in mid-air, she briefly glimpsed the men looking over the edge from where she had jumped.

After a complete rotation, she straightened out and launched her widow’s line at a street lamp. Using the arc of the swing to slow her descent, The Widow landed on the ground, rolling and skidding a few feet before stopping in front of the parking garage’s valet station. She painfully picked herself back up, again retracting her line.

A young valet in the standard white shirt and ugly vest was standing nearby, his mouth agape. “A-are you okay, Miss?”

Natasha approached the station. “I am afraid I do not have my ticket with me, but I need the keys for Roman—oh, I see them,” and she reached inside on the board holding the various car keys and grabbed her key ring. She took note of the parking space the car was in: third floor, space number 52.

She sprinted into the garage, running up the ramps to the third story. Below, she could hear the commotion of people shouting. Santoni’s men surely know she’s here and are coming for her. That was fine with her…she was leading them here for a reason.

The Black Widow reached the third floor, and followed the painted numbers on the parking spaces to her car, which was near the rear of the garage. Sitting in space number 52 was a jet black 1966 Alfa Romeo Spider.

She inserted the key into the door lock and was about to open the door, when she heard approaching footsteps. She turned, and in the gloom of the dim lighting, she saw a half-dozen more of Santoni’s men approaching almost casually.

“Sorry, lady…but Santoni wants you, and he’s going to get you. They’ve closed the gate at the entrance. There’s no way out.”

Black Widow kneeled down without a word, reaching under the driver’s side door of her car. Nimbly, her fingers hit the secret latch there, and a small object fell from a hidden compartment. She flipped a switch on the object, and slid it from under the car at the group that half-encircled her a short distance away.

Though the vampires had excellent vision, they did not recognize the object until it hit the foot of the one in the middle.

“GRENADE!” he yelled, but instead of an explosion, the grenade began expelling acrid smoke that stung the eyes and choked the lungs of the creatures. This mace gave The Widow all the time she needed to climb into her car.

In the movies, this is where the damsel in distress would fumble getting the keys into the ignition, and when she finally did the car would turn over but refuse to start. However, this was no movie and Natasha Romanoff was no scared teenager. The key slid into the ignition gracefully and the highly tuned vehicle roared to life. She put the car into gear and slammed on the accelerator. The tires spun a moment before catching on the smooth floor of the garage, and took off.

Several of the vampires had turned to mist as soon as the grenade had gone off, but one, a large brute was a bit slow and did not recognize the danger until The Black Widow’s car flew through the irritating smoke and struck him head on. He flipped up onto the roof of the car and his face collided with the passenger side of the windshield, causing web-like cracks to spread over the window. Ichor began to flow from multiple cuts in the creature’s face. The Widow veered from side to side of the aisleway, trying to shake the creature off, but not only did he not seem terribly hurt, he had enough presence of mind to hold on to the car’s windshield wipers.

The Widow took the ramp down to the next floor as she rounded the tight corners of the car-filled garage. The vampire on the hood slid this way and that as she turned, but continued to hold doggedly onto the hood. She took another hard left when she reached the ramp down to the ground floor, then another quick left, and screeched to a halt.

About 50 yards away was the entrance to The Strip. Her enemy hadn’t just lowered the chainlink gate (which she thought her car could bust through), but had parked several cars in front of it. Another half-dozen or so of Santoni’s henchmen stood in front of the cars, waiting for her with smug grins upon their faces. The brute on her hood had gotten to his knees, and had placed his hands on the windshield, with his face drawn close to hers.

“Whatchoo gonna do now?” he asked with a smile that featured several newly missing two front teeth (these made his canine fangs look even larger).

The Widow punched the release on the glovebox of the car and pulled out a Smith and Wesson .45 caliber revolver. She rammed the mammoth barrel through the already cracked windshield less than an inch away from the gloating vampire’s face. His look of victory was replaced by one of surprise a moment before a good deal of his head disappeared in a blast of gunpowder and blood. He flung backwards off of the hood and onto the ground, twitching just a bit.

Natasha slammed the gearshift into reverse and stomped on the gas. The car flew backwards until she reached the ramp leading back to the upper floors. The vampires at the gate began to run toward her, a couple turning into wolves, one turning into a bat, and one checking on his near-headless compatriot on the ground. Black Widow put the car back into first gear and took off back up the ramp.

When she reached the second level and took a hard right, she saw the first group of vampires, the one she had maced, running the opposite way toward her. They scattered as she drove right through them. She continued up to the third floor, veering around corners and up the ramp to fourth floor. She knew there was no escape this way, but was stalling for time to come up with something.

She continued around the garage and went up the ramp to the top floor of the garage. The almost oppressing closeness of the ceiling disappeared into the openness of the night sky. A hard right and she slowed as she drove down the aisle. As she reached the end she turned right again and stopped. To her left she could see Santoni’s hotel. To her front, over the waist-high concrete restraining wall that surrounded the roof level, was a side street.

“Perhaps,” she thought, “Perhaps I could—”

That was all the time she had when she felt a thump hit the ragtop above her. A clawed hand ripped through it, revealing a large bat. No, it wasn’t a bat. It was transforming into a human form. Natasha grabbed her gun off the seat next to her and raised it, but the creature swatted it out of her hand before she could fire it. The creature then grabbed onto The Widow’s shoulder, and she gripped onto the steering wheel and mashed on the accelerator, causing the car to lurch forward. The vampire (now almost totally human in appearance) had to let go and hold onto the top of the windshield to keep from falling off from the sudden acceleration. About 20 feet from the retaining wall, she slammed on the brakes, causing the car to come to a halt, and the creature was flung off of the roof to the ground in front of her. He slid on the slick ground until he hit the retaining wall.

Natasha again released the clutch and floored the accelerator, her brow furrowed in anger. The vampire was slowly getting up when the Alfa Romeo Spider slammed him into the retaining wall, and both went through it in a fury of rending metal and breaking concrete. The car (with the creature splattered across the grill like a bug) and broken chunks of the retaining wall plummeted to the ground below. A few people milling on the side street below quickly scattered to safety as the sky fell down upon them.

The rest of the vampires were making their way onto the roof, and rushed to the edge where the car had gone over.

“Crap,” one vampire said. “Someone call Santoni and tell him his prize is dead. He’s sure to have heard that commotion, and he’ll want to know what happened.”

However, if the vampires had looked over the edge just a few moment earlier, they would have seen The Black Widow skittering around the corner of the building, using the wall-crawling abilities of her costume. At the last moment she leapt through the tear in the ragtop the vampire had created, and fired her Widow’s Line and caught it on the ledge. She had retracted it and quickly crawled on the wall to around the corner. Out of sight, she listened to the creatures talk about her.

“They think I am dead,” she thought almost happily. “I could use this opportunity to escape, to get help. But running up until now has left a bitter taste in my mouth. No, Santoni, I think I am through running. It is time for you and yours to feel what it is like to be the prey.”

Next Issue:  The conclusion to “Whatever Happens In Vegas…” as The Black Widow, who’s been on the defensive for two issues, takes the offensive against the Vegas vampires!

Widow Speak

Say what? An actual issue of Black Widow? Yup, and hopefully, more will be coming on a regular basis. After a long stint of health issues, computer issues, and writer’s block issues, it seems like I’m beginning to get the groove back. I wrote this issue over the last two days (the first 1/3 or so which I had to re-write since it was lost when my old computer crashed a while back). I’m not sure how good the issue is, but it felt good to just pound it out and I hope someone out there enjoys it.

I’d like to give a huge thanks to Cory and the rest of the EiC’s for being so patient and supportive (of course, it’s possible they’ve just forgotten who I even am).

The plot to this story changed quite a bit since I wrote the first part…umm…a long time ago. For the longest time, I just wasn’t happy with where I was going to originally go with the story. It was actually after I read Josh Reynolds’ West Coast Avengers #23 that I figured out how I could write myself out of the creative corner I had put myself in, so a thanks goes to him for that (and for writing such kick-ass stories, too!).

So if anyone is reading this, thanks to you, too, and feel free to send me any comments or reviews, and I’ll try to post them in future issues.

Jason Eberly
4:47 AM
August 8, 2007