Justice League of America - Batman: The Stone King (12 page)

In daylight he might have been able to make it to the foot of the pyramid. In darkness, even with his night lenses, it was an invitation to death or serious injury.

The trees!

A vivid picture of the stand of cottonwoods growing almost at right angles out of the bank below flashed into his mind. Batman didn't hesitate. As his feet hit the third course down, he launched himself out into thin air.

One second–two–and for a moment he thought he'd blown it.

Then branches whipped against his face and chest, snapping under his weight, carrying him with them as they plunged down toward the ground.

He landed with a bone-jarring thud on soft grass and soil. He lay there for a moment, breathing deeply, regaining his composure. Leaning against the tree trunk for support, he hauled himself shakily upright and looked around.

The turquoise fog had disappeared.

His fellow Justice Leaguers had disappeared.

And the Gotham Pyramid was no longer there.

Gotham County, October 28

The dechromed black Rolls Royce's six-liter engine purred as the sleek car cleaved the darkness, heading for the lights of Gotham City.

"Where to, sir?" In the soft leather driving seat, Bruce Wayne's English butler, Alfred Pennyworth, kept a watchful eye on the speedometer set in the walnut dash. It wouldn't do to be stopped by an overzealous highway patrol officer. Not tonight. Not with the cargo he was carrying. "The Batcave?"

Reclining in the car's spacious rear, Batman thought for a moment. He'd already used the Rolls's built-in computer to send a message to all of the Justice League's reserve members, informing them of what had happened. Many were absent on personal business, but the others were now placed on high alert. "No," he said at last. "Take me to Arkham Asylum."

Alfred raised one eyebrow askance, but voiced no question. "Very well, sir," he agreed, in his rich English tones. Obviously his master was deep in thought. When the time came for Alfred's opinion, Batman would ask.

Their employer-employee relationship was a public display, a mask to conceal their mutual respect and genuine friendship. Trained at one of England's finest colleges, Alfred Pennyworth was an ex-actor and combat medic who turned to domestic service when his father died. He made the perfect butler for the Waynes, a model of efficiency and a walking encyclopedia on all things social and domestic.

Alfred also made the perfect aide for Bruce Wayne's alter ego, the Batman. He was discreet, honest, hardworking, and reliable. He was a talented actor who taught an eager Bruce everything he knew about disguise. And he could keep a secret.

When Alfred had first discovered that his young master aimed to lead a double existence, he'd been appalled. Little more than a teenager, Bruce would be inviting all manner of violence and danger into his life. When rational discussion failed to dissuade Bruce from his self-appointed task, Alfred took the only decision a man of honor could.

He became the Batman's entrusted aide.

When the vigilante was on patrol, Alfred manned the control console in the cavern buried deep under Wayne Manor. He did the research that different cases called for. And he was a sounding board, as well as a fountain of good advice.

As with Batman himself, what started as a part-time interest soon became a full-time vocation. Alfred knew that, with every villain Batman put behind bars, with every innocent victim he saved, Bruce Wayne was atoning for his own parents' death. It became Alfred's mission in life to help his young master in any way he could.

Bruce never knew where the older man found the time–or energy–to keep Wayne Manor, the family's sprawling mansion, in order too.

Now, Batman's mind was racing. He had used his satellite phone's secure line to call Alfred immediately after he'd recovered from his ordeal at the pyramid. Wonder Woman and the others were gone, spirited away, perhaps captured or dead. The pyramid itself had disappeared as if it had never existed, like a hologram without its light source.

The Justice League had faced a being of immense power, and Batman didn't have a single solid clue as to its purpose or motivation.

Over and over, he reviewed the events of the past few nights. Was there anything that jarred? Anything that sat uneasily with the normal flow of events?

Just about everything!

No matter how hard he thought, or what angle he approached it from, Batman always came up with a big fat zero.

There were only two possible clues that might lead him somewhere, and both of them were pretty tenuous. First, the history of the pyramid might shed some light. No doubt Alfred would be happy to do some research on it, or on similar ones found elsewhere.

And second, there
was fear.
Batman had rarely experienced that kind of terrified dread before. Perhaps only once, when as a child it had really sunk home that his parents were never coming back. That he was alone in the world. Forever.

He knew of only one man–apart from himself–who specialized in fear.

Professor Jonathan Crane, a.k.a. the Scarecrow.

Arkham Asylum, the home for the criminally insane, stood on a wooded hillside several miles outside Gotham City center. High brick walls topped with razor wire kept unwelcome intruders out, and would-be fugitives in.

Its crowstepped gables and Gothic turrets rose above the beeches and elms, scraping at the sky like fingers silhouetted against the moon. Here and there windows were lit, backlighting the thick metal bars that guarded them. Dozens of gargoyles brooded at the corners of the roof, their fierce glares and bared fangs designed to keep all evil at bay.

In that, the gargoyles had failed. Arkham Asylum housed more evil than all other penitentiaries and institutions in North America combined. Its rambling corridors and Victorian rooms were home-away-from-home to archvillains such as the Joker, Two-Face, and the brutal Killer Croc. At any one time, it might be expected to have Clayface, the toxic Poison Ivy, and the Ventriloquist and his dummy Scarface within its somber walls.

As Alfred guided the Rolls Royce around a bend in the road that ran past the asylum grounds, the sunroof whispered open and Batman exited. There was a brief sense of a shadow swooping upward, of black scalloped wings taking to the air.

The car continued on its way without slowing, making for the little-known back roads that would take it to Wayne Manor. Alfred had some research to do.

In the branches of a tree that overhung the road, Batman briefly paused to consider his route. His nightscope brought the hundred-year-old building into focus.

He saw the stooped shape of Jeremiah Arkham passing a window, making his long night rounds. Batman had a lot of reasons to criticize Jeremiah–especially over security lapses–but he knew that the asylum owner cared deeply for his charges. He genuinely wanted to make some of the most evil people in the world well again.

Until he succeeded, Batman would be there to pick up the pieces.

As Jeremiah passed, Batman made a snap decision, then moved into action. He swarmed up into the higher branches until they became too thin to bear his weight. A bat-line carried a grapnel to a main branch of the ancient elm that stood opposite the one he was situated in, and he swung across the road twenty feet from the ground.

Batman knew the location of every closed-circuit TV camera in the grounds, and timed his passage to coincide with their swiveling lenses. Two permanent security guards patrolled the gardens and woods with German shepherd dogs. Batman waited patiently till they'd stopped to share a cigarette and a joke before he moved again.

Twenty seconds later he was seeking handholds on ivy stems thicker than his wrists, as he clambered up the asylum wall.

Built as a private house around the same time as Wayne Manor, the asylum was a product of a bygone age, when media magnates and railroad tycoons vied with one another to build the most luxurious palace for their families. No expense had been spared, vast fortunes had been spent. But whereas the Waynes had gone from strength to strength, the family that built Arkham had lost its wealth and been forced to sell its palace.

Now, both buildings hid their innermost secrets from the world of man.

Batman stepped off the spreading ivy that encased half the frontage, onto a foot-wide ledge that ran along the third-floor level. Back to the wall, he moved swiftly along it until he came to a darkened, bar-covered window. He rapped loudly with his knuckles. No reaction.

He rapped again, and this time was rewarded by a strange, strangled sound, "Hrraaao," like a cross between a laugh and a death rattle. The sound of a very disturbed man.

Inside the bars, the leaded glass windowpane swung open.

"Clancy?" The voice was sibilant and menacing. "Is that you, my trusted lieutenant?"

"Afraid not, Scarecrow. I busted Clancy three nights ago. He's sweating in a holding cell on Blackgate Island."

Batman moved so Scarecrow could see his cowl. The sight brought an immediate howl of dismay as Scarecrow physically recoiled. "Hraiii!"

Moonlight streamed between the bars, enabling Batman to see the figure inside. The body seemed stooped and twisted, yet still tall and with a wiry strength. It was enclosed in a costume made from burlap, with sticks of straw jutting from the cuffs at wrist and ankle. A sackcloth hood covered the head, topped by a ridiculous floppy hat. The eyes that blazed out from slits in the hood were the eyes of a madman, not the eyes of respected university professor Jonathan Crane.

Jeremiah Arkham believed in allowing his charges to live out their fantasies. That way, he was more likely to gain their trust. He'd discovered long ago that forcing them to wear asylum drabs provoked more trauma than it was worth.

"Come to gloat, have you?" Scarecrow hissed accusingly. "After all, you put me here." The crooked body straightened, and Scarecrow went on contemptuously. "Despite the fact I'm not insane. You're the one who's crazy!"

Batman was silent, letting the villain unburden his unhinged venom. He needed Scarecrow in a good mood.

"Look at you," Scarecrow went on scathingly. "You dress like a bat. You fly around at night. You hide your face behind a mask. Isn't
that
insane?"

"Far from it." Batman shrugged. "I'm not the one who left two security guards crippled by fear gas. It wasn't me who condemned their families to a lifetime of misery."

"Collateral damage," Scarecrow replied loftily. "There's always fallout when a repressed society tries to smother the creativity of its true individuals. Those guards stood between me and my destiny."

"You mean the Assyrian clay tablets you stole? You think books are worth more than life?"

"Books are worth more than anything," Scarecrow returned, his long skinny arms wrapping themselves around his body in a strange hug that seemed to reassure him. "Books are the repository of all knowledge. Books are more precious than gold!"

Batman adjusted his stance on the ledge, leaning in closer to the villain. "I haven't come here to argue with you, Crane."

Scarecrow bristled. "Professor Crane is out," he announced coldly. "Scarecrow is in."

As a child, Jonathan Crane had been severely traumatized by a flock of birds. Perhaps his vivid imagination had been fired by some illicit viewing of the Hitchcock movie, or perhaps he really had been attacked. No one but him would ever know. For years he'd hidden his growing psychosis from the world, until it had erupted one day in the psychology class he taught at Gotham University.

The good professor turned a gun on his students–purely to illustrate a point, of course. The university authorities didn't see things the same way. His foolishness cost Crane his job, and so began his abrupt slide into poverty and obscurity. Crane didn't bother too much about lack of recognition, but he badly needed money for buying his life's obsession: books.

He turned to crime, adopting the sinister imagery of the Scarecrow. Birds had frightened him; scarecrows frightened birds. Now Jonathan Crane–alias the Scarecrow–would frighten everybody. Fear became his stock-in-trade.

His scientific genius allowed him to concoct a range of gases that could inflict fear, or terror, or dread, on anyone who absorbed them. As his ambitions grew, he experimented with gases that caused fear of specific things. Scarecrow loved to watch an arachnaphobe, for instance, imagining he was covered in revolting spiders. Or a claustrophobe believing he was entombed alive in his coffin.

"Scarecrow," Batman said pointedly, "I'm here for two reasons. First, to verify that
you
are here, and not some ringer while the real Scarecrow goes on a rampage."

"I'll have you know, sir," Scarecrow said haughtily, "that I would personally deal with any such imposter! There is but one of me."

"Relax. I've heard more than enough to know it's you." He paused, knowing how strange his next words would sound. "Secondly, I want to ask you a favor."

In the pale light Batman watched as the hood's rough-stitched mouth widened in a grin.

"And what, precisely, would you want from me?"

"A recipe," Batman said curtly. "For one of your fear gases."

Scarecrow stamped his straw-filled boot petulantly on the floor of his cell. "Oh, yes," he drawled sarcastically, "I do have a certain reputation as an altruist to maintain. I mean, I always bestow favors on lunatics who have me locked away!"

"I'll give you something in return," Batman offered.

Scarecrow didn't react.

Batman tried again. "I'll give you a book. A first edition."

The Dark Knight knew his enemy well. If there was one thing Scarecrow cared for with a passion that defied explanation, it was books. In secret stores and warehouses throughout the city, the Master of Fear had a collection of millions that he had bought or stolen over the years. It was his ambition to own every book in the world, from those written in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs to the latest bestseller.

Beneath his grotesque hood, Scarecrow's eyes lit up. "A first edition?" he repeated, savoring each word. He drummed his fingertips lightly against his sack-covered mouth. "By whom? Shakespeare, perhaps? Marlowe? Spenser?" His voice turned disdainful. "Or are we talking Agatha Christie and Jackie Collins?"