Descent #2

PROLOGUE – SOMEWHERE IN THE DREAMING
“I appreciate you’re not sneaking up on me in my library this time, my sister,” the taller figure said.
“You’re welcome,” the shorter woman, pale and thin and wearing black from head to toe, replied with a smile. The smile almost immediately faded, however, and the woman’s lips were pursed with concern. “But I’m here about Grigori again. You know what’s happening. You know that he’s going to have the mental blocks that you put into him removed,”
The taller figure, a man clad in white, nodded slowly. “I am aware of this. But if I move to interfere, then our nephew will be revealed at once—revealed to the one of our siblings we’ve sought to hide him from."
The female shook her head. “She would not stoop so low as to hurt him.”
“She once fathered a child and tried to force my predecessor to spill his blood and attract the ire of the Kindly Ones, solely to avenge a perceived slight. If there are actions she would not stoop to, I am not aware of them. At the very least, she is likely to entangle him in her ceaseless plotting. Sometimes, I think it is best to be—as they say—“off the radar” when it comes to certain relatives. Besides, I think he will need to grow now, on his own, to discover more of what he is, to face what is to come. He is becoming stronger and should be able to handle what awaits.”
She pulled off her black top hat, stared into its emptiness as she spoke. “I’ve watched him for a while, you know. All his life. He’s different than the other nieces and nephews we’ve had, I feel very… protective of him.”
“That much is obvious. And he does continue to enjoy your protection, does he not?” her brother responded, pointing to his right eye. “After all... he does bear your mark. That makes him very hard to kill.”

MEANWHILE, IN CALVIN CITY
Several days after the events of last issue (and just before the first issue of his own series) Hezikiah Dare is walking around, enjoying the still novel sensation of strolling beneath an open sky. His senses feel the world settling down in the rapidly approaching embrace of night. And then he senses another vibration. An unusual one. Something close. He looks up but sees nothing. He decides to follow the vibrations because they remind him a very specific place: Mars, where he gained his powers. And honestly, he figures he has nothing better to do on a Wednesday night.

He ends up in a lower-income neighborhood. Not quite the ghetto but not much above it. He walks through the locked lobby door and heads to the second floor. He knocks on the apartment door which is opened by a very confused Greg Moore. “Do I know you?”
“No,” Hezikiah answers, smiling, “But will you share your Martian with me?”
"What do you know?" Greg says, pulling him in the door quickly and shutting the door. But Hezikiah simply shrugs.
"I just sensed the Martian vibrrations and followed them," he says. "I really am just ever so excited to meet a native of Mars!"
“The Martian is helping me with something at the moment,” Greg says, after a long pause. “You can talk to him after that.”

The presence Hezikiah sensed in the room now becomes visible: the Martian Manhunter. The situation is clearly beginning to try his patience, “Let's make this fast. I have little time. I have only recently returned to life, and there is much to be done. Descent-- Greg-- I want to emphasize how fortunate you are that Gypsy has become so fond of you. Were it not for her entreaties, I would not have found time to come and aid you.”

The Manhunter then goes to work on Greg with his mental powers, trying to ignore the curiosity of his newest fan. After some time, his work is complete. “I have been able to break the locks that were put on you,” he says. “They were created by a telepath far more powerful than myself, but it looks like they required constant maintenance. They had been allowed to lapse, but that was the reason I was able to break them.”
Already, Greg is realizing that he has gained the ability to shape shift. It is very minor and can only slightly alter his appearance. “I can use this to make a costume,” he observes. “I never needed one in the Squad. We just wore all black and tried not to get shot.”
“Now he gets to answer all my questions," Hezikiah says quickly. "Do you have a spider like mine?”

The witch-boy's familiar suddenly appears and J'onn J'onzz, the Manhunter from Mars, is strangely disturbed. Instead of responding with a question of his own, J'onn simply says, “I think it's time to go.”

Greg suddenly gets a call... not on his personal phone, but on a smaller, more streamlined unit, the one the Squad gave him. A phone that has never rung before. He picks up, and the voice on the line is the Bronze Tiger, the Suicide Squad's main field leader. His voice is abrupt. “Go to ground and hide as quickly as possible,” the Tiger says. “He escaped and is coming for you. He is far more powerful then we thought.”

Hezikiah, J'onn, and Greg go running out the building. J'onn suggests maybe hiding Greg on the JLA satellite for a bit. Hezikiah says, “That sounds great! Let's go into space with a Martian!”

As Hezikiah and Descent follow the Martian Manhunter across a parking lot, Damien appears next to them in a billow of smoke and brimstone, Al-Aknor sitting on his shoulder just like a witch's familiar. "Hello, Grigori," the man says, his eyes glowing a threatening red.

Continued in Descent #3