Matt heard the woman first, in the parking lot behind a liquor and spirits store; shouting and fighting and obviously in pain, but trying to keep going. Matt stopped just behind the corner, reaching out with his senses. The woman had been forced to the ground, and there were two attackers on top of her. Matt could also sense another near the open back door of the building, ignoring the woman and simply drinking out of a bottle, swallowing in short, regular intervals.

"Shoot directly over me!" she cried again, but Matt couldn't tell whom she was addressing. "They're biting! Ugh! Shoot one foot above me!"

Biting? That was a new one. Matt leaped in, pulling one of the attackers away from the fallen woman and punching him in the face. Behind him, he was aware of something – an arrow – finishing its flight and thwacking into its target. The woman grunted. Matt's opponent grabbed Matt's arm and bit into his suit. Matt punched him again, freed his arm, then kicked the man in the solar plexus and felt him stumble backwards.

"Can you see them?" the woman panted, and this time Matt was close enough to catch the faint sound, if not the words, of an electronic reply. Bluetooth? Walkie-talkie? The woman continued, "Can you –awrgh! Shoot, shoot! Right over my legs, six inches over my legs!"

Matt turned to sense the second man sprawled diagonally over the woman, trying to chew her shin. He pulled the man away, the woman's leg came up with him, and the arrow hit the inside of her thigh. To her credit, she didn't exactly cry out, but her bitten-down groan of pain was audible even over the sound of Matt pummelling the man's face until he collapsed.

"Sorry!" Matt gasped.

"Shit happens," the woman gasped back.

From the door of the shop, the swallowing stopped abruptly. Glass shattered, there was a kind of electronic crackling in the same place, and then there was a very loud pop. Two heartbeats now, in perfect unison, where Matt was sure there had only been one before; two people striding forwards, also in lockstep. To make things worse, the first two attackers were starting to stir again. He sent the nearest back down with a kick to the head, then grabbed the other and twisted his arm behind his back.

"This one of yours?" he asked, pulling him up to his knees to face the two others. "Stop there or I'll break his arm."

There was no answer from any of them, not even an involuntary sound of pain from the one he was holding. And now that he was so close, Matt became aware that the body he was holding smelled … different. There was no shampoo, deodorant, aftershave, detergent, or anything else artificial. There was no sweat, no fear, not even any scent of normal skin. Whatever he smelled, he'd never come across it before, and couldn't even compare it to anything he did know. The skin felt different, too, but he didn't have long to contemplate it.

"Shoot!" the woman commanded, trying at the same time to scramble backwards using both hands and her good leg. The next arrow landed in the man's ribs, only inches from Matt's hand, and the body in his arms collapsed with the slightest of exhalations. He pushed it away. The other two attackers had caught up with the woman, and he leaped over to pull them away.

"Hey, Daredevil," the woman called, her teeth still gritted. With a hand on each attacker's neck, Matt cracked their heads together.

"Yeah?" he called back, banging them again, despite their efforts to twist out of his grip.

"How can you see them?"

Matt didn't stop to answer; his attackers had managed to free themselves. He hit one, kicked the other, and could hear the third one, the one he thought he'd taken out already, crawling towards the woman on the ground.

"Back-up's coming in," the woman announced, and something swooped down from above, bringing a strong wind with it. It hit the ground so hard that it shook and Matt almost lost his balance.

"Thor, can you see them?" the woman shouted, then cried out in pain. "I've got one on me! I've got my hand on it!"

So, the back-up that had flown in was not a something, but a someone. Still fighting his two, Matt listened nevertheless. His new ally had some kind of weapon in his hand; it crackled – and smelled – like a taser. A big one. A giant one. And then the man, the one she'd called Thor, commanded, "Let go!"

A huge burst of electricity jumped away from the giant taser and over to the attacker. Matt smelled a brief instant of burning, and and felt the sudden loss of a heartbeat.

"Over there, see the arrow," the woman gasped. The man lifted his arm to the sky – why was he doing that if he merely needed to recharge the taser? There was the same loud crackling as before, the same burst of electricity, then the same silence where a heartbeat had once been. He'd killed him! Matt opened his mouth to exclaim, but then his attention was caught by the eerily familiar pop from inside the liquor store, and the emergence of two more heartbeats.

He raced towards the entrance, hoping to catch the attackers and knock them out before Taser-Thor killed them. And from outside the fence, there was someone else, another man jogging into the loading area.

"Clint!" the woman called, but then Matt had to shift his concentration to where the two new attackers were coming straight for him. He kicked and hit, but whenever he got one down, the other one was coming up again.

"You can see them?" That was the third man, Clint. Matt heard an odd drawn-out pulling sound, and it took him a moment to place the sound. A bowstring – oh, of course, this was the man who had shot the arrows earlier. Now he was kneeling by the woman, aiming in Matt's general direction, but not yet shooting.

"Can't you?" Matt reached out, meaning to grab his opponent by the hair, but the man was bald, and his hand slipped down to the man's neck instead. It seemed strangely smooth, slippery even under his gloves, but Matt hung on. Clint loosed his arrow and Matt felt his opponent's body jerk with the impact. At least the heartbeat remained. Maybe they could question the man later. He let him drop, ready to move onto the next one.

Then Clint cried out, "Got my back, he's biting my back! Thor, zap him, right over my back!"

"The lightning will affect you, too." Taser-Thor spoke for the first time; his voice was deep and his accent reminded Matt of Britain. Not stopping to worry about that, or about what he meant by lightning, Matt leaped over and pulled the attacker away from Clint, then spun him around for a punch in the face.

"Hey, Daredevil, hold him!" the archer called. Matt pulled his punch, keeping the man at arm's length, and the arrow thudded into the man's body. He let him fall, felt the proximity of the lightning bolt, and a moment later, the heartbeat stopped. There was a sudden, pungent waft of burning flesh that also disappeared.

"Why are you killing them?" Matt demanded, turning in Taser-Thor's direction. Except it wasn't Taser-Thor, he realized, it was just plain Thor, Thor of Asgard, the being that many referred to as a god. And his hammer really did throw lightning.

"You can see them and yet you do not know?" Thor replied. Then there was more crackling, and another burst of lightning finished off the first one that Clint had shot, the one Matt had meant to save for questioning. Then, too close to the truth, Thor asked suspiciously, "Can you see them?"

Matt hesitated, and the woman asked, "You a mutant?"

"Something like that," he replied, trying not to sound too relieved. They knew he was Daredevil, they didn't have to know that he was blind, too.

"They are not human, though they have a humanoid shape, and they will become visible once they have drunk enough blood. If you can sense them, then help me find where they are spawning," Thor said. "Otherwise they will continue to multiply until they take over this planet and consume everything that contains blood."

When Matt remembered the smell, and the feel, and the biting, he could believe that these things were not human. And if they were trying to take over the planet, even Father Lantom couldn't call it a sin if Matt helped eradicate them. He listened, and turned his head to make it appear as though he were looking, too.

"Inside," he said, and led the way. There was broken glass all over the floor and everything stank of spilled beer. Farther down the aisle made by stacked crates, Matt could hear steady swallowing.

"One, straight ahead," he murmured.

Just then, the creature dropped the bottle it had been drinking from. Knowing what was going to happen next, Matt ran forward to get the thing before it split into two. He grabbed an arm at the same time Thor called out something about multiplying, but then the arm turned into pure electric current, Clint shot an arrow straight into Matt's thigh, lightning crackled over him as well, and everything exploded.