Justice League of America - Batman: The Stone King (6 page)

Without warning, Batman dived full-length onto the walkway. For an instant, the surprised rats drew back–and that was all the time the Dark Knight needed. Even as the rodents surged forward again, Batman's hand closed around the sonic emitter in the stream, and his thumb pressed down hard on the trigger.

The sound was so high-pitched, Batman himself couldn't hear it. But he could see its effect on the rats as it assaulted their sensitive hearing: many of them screamed, a high, keening noise that grated on Batman's senses. Then they broke formation, turned, and ran as fast as they could to put distance between themselves and the source of their pain.

Like some modem-day Pied Piper of Hamelin, Ratcatcher blew desperately on his whistle. But his rodent friends could no longer hear him over the high-frequency cacophony that was jangling their nervous systems.

Batman rolled to his feet, leaving the sonic emitter where it lay, still dispensing its inaudible whine. He knew the real problem wasn't the rats. It was Ratcatcher.

Knowing that his scheme was foiled, Flannegan had turned tail and was about to flee into the maze of tunnels. The bola whirled in Batman's hand for a final time. He sent it spinning through the air, its weights wrapping themselves around Flannegan's ankles and bringing him down heavily to the sewer floor.

Ratcatcher sprawled in the muck, jabbering frantically, his voice muffled by his sinister gas mask. "Boys! Boys, don't leave me now!"

"Too late," Batman growled. "Your 'boys' are long gone."

Ratcatcher tried to scramble to his feet, but Batman's foot sent him face first into the disgusting slurry that ran down the center of the sewer. Batman grabbed the villain's hands and roped them behind his back with a small length of bat-line.

"Where's the loot, Flannegan?" the vigilante rasped. "Or do we have to do this the hard way?"

A low rumbling noise echoed along the tunnel.

At first, Batman dismissed it as a subway train on the downtown line. But the noise grew louder and closer, and Batman was puzzled to realize it was coming from underground–almost directly beneath his feet. Suddenly the sewer floor began to shake and quiver, as if the earth below were buckling.

Another earthquake?
Batman wondered.
It can't be. We lined the whole city with seismic detectors after the last one.

Batman grabbed Ratcatcher by his cuffed hands and dragged him hurriedly aside, throwing them both against the sewer wall. Just in time . . .

The ledge was vibrating violently, and small sparks of blue light seemed to seep up through the cracks between the bricks. Then, with a deafening roar, a patch of floor the size of a manhole cover erupted as a solid column of blue light burst up from below.

"Look out!" Batman yelled a warning to his prisoner as the column of energy powered its way up and smashed through the ceiling a couple of yards above them. Debris rained down, and Batman did his best to shield them both.

Raymond Marcus sat on one of the hard wooden pews in the main body of Gotham Cathedral. For the first time in many weeks, there was a smile on his face–a smile that didn't hurt. John Consody, the main speaker at the night's event, was in top oratorical form. He was so inspiring, Marcus was glad he'd ignored Madame Cassandra's warning and come to the All-Faith meeting anyway.

"Faith is the rock on which we must build our lives," Consody pontificated. He stood in the ornately carved wooden pulpit, addressing the thousand citizens who'd turned up to hear him speak. Many were obviously sick; a dozen pairs of crutches leaned against the pews, and several people in wheelchairs sat in the aisles off to the side. "The works of Man last only awhile, then crumble into sand. But faith endures forever."

Everyone's attention was fixed intently on Consody as the congregants waited for what he'd say next. Waiting to see if the miracle would come.

"If we have faith, all will one day be well. Faith can move mountains." The charismatic preacher's voice was growing louder, the words coming faster. "Faith uplifts the human spirit. Faith can heal all our ills!"

This was the kind of language Marcus needed to hear. It was nearly three years since botched surgery had triggered his facial neuralgia. Three years of daily pain, pain that seemed to worsen with every passing hour, pain that defied the doctors' best efforts to banish or even alleviate it.

One specialist had told him neuralgia was the most painful disease known to the medical community, as if Marcus should wear the fact as some kind of badge of honor. He knew exactly how painful it was. All he wanted was a cure.

Surely, after all he'd been through, one tiny miracle wasn't too much to ask for?

Marcus caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye, and turned his gaze from the pulpit to the nearby altar. Covered in a pristine white doth with golden stitching, the altar was backed by an oversized heavy plaster sculpture depicting Christ in his agony on the cross.

Tiny sparks of bluish-white light seemed to be playing around the altar. Some of them rolled off the top, more like globules of mercury than flashes of light. Everyone else was fixated on Consody in the pulpit, and Raymond Marcus felt a sudden elation welling up inside him.

Lurching to his feet, he pushed past a couple of people and into the aisle. The bluish light grew stronger as Marcus walked purposefully toward the altar, his gaze never leaving it.

A miracle!
The words soared in his mind like a hymn of praise.
There's going to be a miracle!

A couple of feet from the altar, the pain in his face forgotten, he stopped and leached out a hand toward the sparkling light that danced in front of him.

The altar erupted with a roar like thunder.

A dense column of blue energy shot straight up from it, engulfing Marcus's outstretched hand. He screamed in sudden, surprised pain as the skin on his hand and wrist began to blister. Dazedly, he smelled the reek of his own burning flesh and desperately wrenched his hand away.

He stared at his wrist in shock, unable for a moment to comprehend what had happened. His hand had disappeared almost entirely, leaving only a few strips of charred skin flapping off burned bone.

Dimly, he was aware of voices shouting and people leaping to their feet. Then the column of energy struck the cathedral ceiling, twenty-five feet above. Beams and rafters cracked and broke, then tumbled down into the church interior.

Raymond Marcus looked up, just in time to see the falling wooden crossbeam that crushed him to death.

As the energy beam burst through the sewer roof, Batman realized that the cathedral was directly above him. He knew that whatever the source of this lethal pillar of light, wherever it came from, the people inside were going to need help.

Ignoring Ratcatcher's curses and protests, Batman tied him to a set of iron rungs a safe distance away that led up to a sewer hatch.

"I'll be back for you," he growled.

Part of the arched ceiling had collapsed under the power of the beam. Taking care that no part of him touched the energy column, Batman scaled the worn brick tunnel side and hauled himself up through the hole in the roof.

He emerged into a nightmare.

The column of blue light seemed to dance on the altar, still bringing sections of the cathedral roof crashing down on the people below. Dozens lay where they'd fallen, their bodies crushed and broken, while hundreds of others milled around in panic and confusion. The pulpit had shattered like matchwood under the weight of falling timber, and John Consody's lifeless body lay sprawled next to it.

Tonight, faith had not been enough.

Batman barked into the radio microphone that was stitched into the lining of his cowl. He knew that wherever Jim Gordon was, the message would be relayed to him. Emergency services would be there as fast as Gordon could rouse them.

A loud shriek cut across the babble of noise as the metal bands that once supported a plaster sculpture of Christ gave way. It toppled sideways slowly, directly toward a half-dozen caretakers who were trying to maneuver their patients' wheelchairs among the debris.

Batman ran toward the sculpture, throwing himself feetfirst in a double-footed dropkick that squarely connected with its heavy supporting strut. The falling statue twisted in the air as Batman's momentum altered its trajectory. It missed the small group by less than a yard as it crashed to the floor.

A fire extinguisher hung from a bracket on the cathedral wall. Batman wrenched it free and broke its seal, directing a jet of thick foam at the base of the column still playing over the altar.

The foam vaporized instantly. If anything, the energy column swelled rather than shrank.

Realizing it was futile, Batman hurled the metal extinguisher casing into the beam; it too was vaporized.

Now the pillar of energy was swirling above his head like a living thing. Shielding his eyes with his hand, Batman glanced directly into the beam–and felt as if he'd been punched in the gut. A figure was forming in the light, a human shape with a bloodstained torso and golden horns growing from its head.

What
was
this? And how was he going to stop it?

He slid two small metallic spheres from his Utility Belt and weighed them in his hand. He gazed back up at the shifting bull-headed figure in the pillar and felt his blood run cold as its red-glazed eyes swiveled to skewer him.

Batman's heart began to pound. Needles of fear lanced through his mind. Every nerve ending in his body jangled as a black hole of terror opened up at the very core of his being, threatening to suck him in.

Somehow, the bull-headed figure was laying bare the fears that Batman knew and accepted–and it was amplifying them, till they threatened to overwhelm him.

Batman shook his head violently, trying to deflect the malevolence that engulfed him. There was a moment of respite, and Batman seized it. He lobbed the two small spheres with unerring accuracy into the center of the light column.

The phosphor grenades exploded with a flash that lit up the entire cathedral. Just as suddenly, the bull-headed figure seemed to dissolve as the energy column twisted, then buckled.

As suddenly as it had appeared, it withdrew into the altar and vanished completely.

An eerie silence filled the church, broken only by sobbing and the cries of the injured. In the distance, Batman could hear the sound of approaching sirens. Jim Gordon had received his message.

The Dark Knight bent to help a woman trapped by broken pews. As he pulled her to her feet, mercifully uninjured, the vision of the bull-headed figure seemed to linger. What was it? Why had it done this?

When he returned for the Ratcatcher, half an hour later, he still had no answers to his questions.

"This is Rayne Taylor, reporting from Gotham Cathedral, where at least a dozen people have died in a freak tragedy . . ."

Cassandra stared hard at her radio, mentally challenging the reporter's statement. She had never owned a television, because she suspected its subtle electrical fields might disrupt her empathic abilities. But she always listened to the late news on the radio before retiring for the night.

She didn't need to hear the names of the dead to know that Raymond Marcus was among them. Her vision had come true.

Her heart heavy, she switched off the radio and sat down on a window seat, staring out at the lights of the city. Sometimes she wished she'd never inherited her grandmother's talents. Empathy could be more of a curse than a comfort.

She sat there for a long time, dazed and numb, before the tears came and she found herself crying for a man who would never find his miracle.

Boston, October 27

An evening shower of rain had cleansed the city, washing off the day's dirt and freshening the air. The manicured lawns of the mansions on Thurber Avenue had turned a deeper shade of green, mottled by dead leaves the rain had stripped from the trees.

Princess Diana of Themyscira, daughter of Hippolyta, the Queen of the Amazons, stood in the bay window of Ambassador Wester's house, watching a large black-and-white cat as it patrolled the moonlit, tree-studded garden. Behind Diana, a small diplomatic party was in full swing, a murmuring babble of voices backed by quiet jazz music from a state-of-the-art sound system.

The men wore tuxedos and the women were expensively and fashionably dressed, but Diana didn't feel out of place in her red, blue, and gold costume. Silver bracelets given to her by the gods themselves glinted on her wrists, and a golden lasso was slung from her belt.

Her peripheral vision caught a flash of color moving through the trees near the foot of the sweeping gravel drive that led up to the million-dollar house. Diana frowned. A moving spark of blue light? What could that be?

"You are bored with our company, Princess? Or do I call you Wonder Woman?"

Diana half turned, her long, thick, black hair swinging against her bare shoulders. Sergei Vasily, the billionaire Russian businessman in whose honor the party was being held, stood close behind her. His steely eyes and slim mustache gave his face a distinguished look, but Diana wasn't fooled; she'd heard the stories about this man and his ultraviolent clashes with the gangs of the Moscow Mafia. Somehow, Vasily had always come out on top.

"Your choice, Mr. Vasily." Diana's voice was deep and rich. "And how could I possibly be bored by some of the most interesting people on the East Coast?"

Diana nodded slightly toward the main body of the party. The ambassador himself was on the small dance floor, his movements jerky and uncoordinated compared with the lithe grace of the pretty model he danced with. Vasily's girlfriend, Diana noted.

A group of wealthy Silicon Valley investors was animatedly swapping information with Vasily's senior staff, and a gaggle of the younger guests were laughing loudly as they grouped around the punch bowl.

"Ah, if you were only a beautiful princess, that would be enough," Vasily told her with easy charm. His gaze flicked down to acknowledge her costume. "But you are also a super hero, ambassador from the ancient gods and goddesses to the atheists of our modern world. If I were you, I would most certainly be bored."