Synopsis
Last issue the team rescued Wiccan from the Vridai in the jungles of Java. They also got away with the baddies' comatose leader Count Ophidian who they found hidden in a wall of the Temple Of The Three. Now their 2 sorcerers are too drained to teleport them home so they've found an eerie mansion to recover in.
They're caught in a storm of rain and lightning, and a giant hooded skeletal figure looms over the house. Spectrum tries to absorb the energy of the storm to no avail. Daimon Hellstrom claims that the house belongs to Dr Doom and it's all magical special effects to frighten people off. The next stage is real robotic hounds but Monica Rambeau does manage to direct some of the lightning to blast them to pieces.
They enter to find a lit fire in the fireplace surrounded by comfy chairs and occasional tables. Billy Kaplan guesses that Doom has it magically set to provide a welcome for him whenever he visits the place. Blade is suspicious of it being a trap but Angela is going to accept warmth from the fire and deal with a trap if and when it's sprung. And Daimon and Billy need rest before they can arrange teleportation out.
They turn to Ophidian. Last issue they faced him and his advisor Birgit and a horde of Vridai in the Temple, and they thought they killed the Count. But now they realise that was a fake being controlled by Birgit who they now think walled up the real Ophidian as a boy. Angela brought him with them to get information from him when he wakes up. They may have killed all the Vridai in the Temple but there are more on Midgard (that's Earth to us non-Asgardians). They just have to make sure he doesn't use his shape-shifting ability to trick them into fighting each other.
So while they wait they tell each other what appear to be relevant stories from their pasts.
Winter Soldier remembers a time during WWII while he was Captain America's sidekick Bucky. They are in Germany's Black Forest mountains escorting a troop of wounded GIs to a train station. (This must have been during the invasion of Germany in early 1945 before Cap and Bucky both went into suspended animation.) But he sees something mysterious in the woods and sneaks off alone to investigate. He's attacked by a monster which knocks him out. He awakens to find himself attached to a tree trunk by 'ropes' of vegetable stuff. Breaking free he returns to camp to see Cap talking to another Bucky. Waiting until Cap leaves, the real Bucky stabs the fake 1 which turns into a Vridai. Bucky drags the body off and leaves it, seemingly never mentioning it to Steve Rogers. Now Bucky Barnes wonders if the Vridai survived and was the 1 that Blade met in Berlin decades later.
Daimon Hellstrom now remembers something too, from the time when he was with the Defenders and in a relationship with Hellcat (ie sometime between Def#92 when they met and #122 when they quit the team (and got married in #125 and left New York for San Francisco). It appears they had a temporary break up sometime (which I don't recall) and Daimon is feeling angry about being dumped and takes it out on some Dormammu cultists. Unfortunately his anger makes him sloppy so he's losing the fight when Hellcat joins in to help him. Afterwards they are both fired up and retire to a Defenders safe house for make up sex. In the morning Patsy Walker is gone but Daimon is confused by a phone call from Patsy to complain that the security system says he brought a woman home last night. *Of course* she's only angry that he violated the team's security. Now Hellstrom recalls that he got a similar vibe from 'Patsy' as he now gets from the Vridai.
Spider-Woman leaves the gathering. Monica guesses that Jessica Drew is unsettled by shapeshifters ever since she was replaced by a Skrull for a long time in the lead-up to and during Secret Invasion. Many people still can't stop associating her with the things the Skrull Queen did. Angela follows her out and Jess confides that she too had a Vridai encounter.
It was very recently, soon after the birth of her son Gerry. She fell asleep with the child in her arms and awoke with the feeling that he *wasn't* her son. She tried to convince herself she was wrong but then the baby attacked her as a dark shape with wings. She drove it off and found her real child. But now she's afraid that not killing the Vridai duplicate makes her responsible for the current infestation.
Angela leads he back to the others and tells them their memories of Vridai are all false. The Vridai were confined to Svartalfheim and never invaded Midgard before the War Of The Realms. This is all part of the insidious infection by the Vridai of the minds of any who know of them. (Blade gave that as an excuse in #1 for keeping the other Avengers out of this, and only involving these heroes who had already been touched by the enemy. But if Angela is right then Blade's memory of fighting a Vridai years ago is false too, so how did he know about them?)
Bucky says this doesn't change what they have to do. And he fills glasses with wine that Billy found, and they toast their endeavour. But suddenly Monica switches to her energy body and falls to the ground saying something about sensing the 'moment of death'.