Tim Drake had already decided to skip the information sessions on Metropolis colleges. He had read the brochures on Nordham University, the University of Metropolis, and Metropolis Institute of Technology. He was sure they were all good schools but…
—his father wanted Ivy League or nothing.
—his Uncle Derek, the playboy travel writer, said Tim would be a fool to consider anything less than the University of Hawaii.
—his stepmom championed her own alma mater, UCLA at Berkeley
—and although Bruce hadn’t said a word, Tim had a strong hunch that anything farther than Hudson U or University of Gotham would mean the end of his tenure as Robin. How could it not? Batman and Robin, that was the deal after all. And Batman was Gotham City.
There would come a day when he’d have to make those decisions, hard decisions about crimefighting and the rest of his life: to continue as Robin, find a mantel of his own as Nightwing had, or maybe even hang up the cape, settle down to life as a regular person? That day would come; those choices would come. But not today. If he stayed in Gotham, those decisions did not have to be made today.
So the speakers from Nordham and Met-IT could pitch the merits of their campuses to the other seniors at Brentwood Academy. Tim had the afternoon off. He returned to his room, tossed MacBeth and Introduction to Calculus onto the bed, and patted Jowls, the desktop gargoyle that perched on the corner of his computer screen.
“How are we doing, Jowley. Any e-mail come in while I was out? You don’t know how lucky you are, Pal, being the tiny desktop version with a nice dry roof over your head. Saw your big brother last night, on top of the Grupnel Tower, big chip out of his nose and a bird’s nest in his ear. So count your blessings.”
Tim patted the gargoyle again and scrolled through his mail. One in particular caught his eye.
To: Tim Drake <Drakester@oraclesecure.brentwoodacademy.org>
Fr: The All Seeing O
Re: Security risk
Tim,?You downloaded another version of that file? We talked about this. It’s a security risk. Knock it off.
“IT IS NOT!” Tim yelped at the screen. “Barbara! Pitysake, woman! Every guy in Gotham that ISN’T Robin is doing it. It’d look pretty damn suspicious if I wasn’t.”
Tim swung his elbow onto the desk and his neck into the cradle of his waiting hand in a fluid, exasperated flop that left his face mere inches from the computer screen.
“Problem, Jowls,” he told the gargoyle, “Ever since that bootleg of the Poison Ivy-Roxy fight showed up on Kazaa, there’s like six different versions of it reedited and set to music. I got the Saber Dance and Linkin Park versions before Barbara starts in on me about this security stuff. I know why we have to let her encrypt all our ‘net activity through OracleSecure, but that’s all it’s supposed to be. Scramble/descramble, that’s it. Not peek in and see what Tim is downloading now, damnit. It’s just a bit of fun; it’s not a security risk. She just doesn’t like it. A spectacular catfight between two gorgeous, famous, costumed villainesses lacking complexity… set to the Saber Dance… with some sound effects here and there.”
Without moving his head, Tim flicked his eyes up at Jowls, who seemed to be looking back down on him.
“I know, it’s kinda not nice. But it’s not exactly nice when Ivy lets those vines slink up my legs and make a wish.”
He sighed. According to Randy-quad, the definitive version showed up over the weekend: Beethoven’s Pastoral intercut with Pat Benetar’s Hit Me With Your Best Shot and Christina Aguilara’s Dirty. He had to see it. He just had to. He was seventeen, he was a healthy red-blooded male, and he put his life on the line nightly to make the city safe for decent people. He deserved this.
“C’mon Jowls,” Tim said, removing his lucky gargoyle from its perch and tucking it into his jacket. Barbara might peek into his datastream but there were others she wouldn’t dare, “To the Batcave!”
“O, For-tu-na!”
The opening strains of Orff’s Carmina Burana blared out of the small computer speakers on Jimmy Olsen’s desk. He lurched forward, fumbling for the volume control knob and turned the volume all the way down, his heart racing. He peeked up over the edge of his cubicle around the Daily Planet newsroom. Thankfully, the music hadn’t really been loud enough to be heard over the normal din of the reporters’ bullpen, but he nervously scanned the room anyway, making sure no one had turned their attention his way. Satisfied that his secret was still safe, he ducked back down into his cubicle, turned the volume knob up just a touch and restarted the video.
His buddy Geoff had sent him an e-mail with a link to the Website he’d been scouring the ‘Net for…Undernet.IvyRox.com. It was, to every male Superhero fanatic between the ages of 12 and 30, the motherlode: A site dedicated to all of the various versions of the Ivy-Roxy catfight in several different downloadable formats.
Jimmy watched the video clip—now at a respectable volume—with the intensity of a conspiracy theorist with the Zapruder film. Sure, he’d seen the video—he’d watched the original more times than was probably prudent—but each version just got better and funnier. This one, set to Carmina Burana, was the funniest he’d seen by far—including an added-in cartoon Joker sitting in the background, drooling and clapping.
“I’ve heard that if you pause it exactly at the one minute, thirty-seven second mark, you can catch a glimpse of Roxy’s nipple.”
Jimmy’s head jerked around like an owl. Lois Lane was leaning against the doorway of his cubicle, her notepad in one hand and her “World’s Greatest Reporter” coffee mug (Thanks, Clark.) in the other, as she stared at his computer screen with a smirk on her lips. Jimmy stuttered and stammered a ridiculous excuse about clicking an errant link as he spun back around and fumbled across his desk again, this time for his mouse. Unfortunately, he fumbled a bit too frantically, knocking the cordless mouse across the desk and sending it careening into his cup full of pens—which promptly exploded all over the desk.
Lois stood there, blithely sipping her coffee as Jimmy did his impression of a Jim Carrey movie. Once Jimmy finally got control of the situation and managed to turn off the video clip, he turned with a sigh toward his visitor.
“S-s-sorry, Miss Lane. I-is there something I can do for you?”
“Clark and I are heading to Gotham City for a few weeks and Perry wanted me to tell you that we’ll be using a freelance photographer if we need one while we’re there, so you’re not coming with us. He says to check with Green and Lewis to see if they need you for anything. Well, that and that the real reason why you’re not coming with us is that he didn’t want you getting within a h undred miles of Poison Ivy or Roxy Rocket.”
Jimmy blanched, his mouth agape. “He… Mr. White said that?!”
“No,” Lois replied, smirking again. “Actually, he just wanted me to tell you to check with Green and Lewis for assignments. That last stuff I added just to watch your face turn that color.”
He stared at her blankly for a moment, then she winked at him and walked off, leaving Jimmy sitting motionless in his chair, waiting for his heart to stop pounding like a jackhammer.
One of the great ironies of life with Batman: sometimes the best place to avoid him is right under his nose. Not that avoiding him was a big priority when I was working; I always liked to sweeten a prowl with a little bat-action. But now and then I did happen upon the Batmobile. There it would be, parked in some side street, announcing to those with eyes to see that he wasn’t there. He had been there, but now he was off patrolling, usually to the south or southeast… And he would be coming back to this spot, but when he did, he would be intent on getting to the car and moving on to his next location. He would not be focused on the rooftops and that meant the neighborhood was mine for the taking.
Today that irony had returned in an unexpected way. Today it meant the one place to avoid him was the cave. Paradox of paradoxes, the Batcave is so central to all he is, his great mission, and today—after last night—he was avoiding it like the plague.
The cave is more than his war room. He might think of it that way, all the tools and resources he’s assembled for his work. But that’s not it at all. The Batcave is a monument… to his pain. And this morning, the way he’s hurting, it was the last place he would come.
Most bad nights, he’ll return late, near dawn or sometimes after. Not last night. He was back early, couldn’t have been very long after I’d turned out the light. I’d only started to drift off when I felt a warm tug pulling at me, then the arm wrapping around. I purred and nestled in some, and he said “Go back to sleep.”
Woke me up instantly. It was Batman’s voice. “Go back to sleep.” It was Batman’s voice and it shouldn’t have been. Not cuddling in the middle of the night. I twisted around in his arms and looked into his eyes. The room was dark but we’ve a lot of years looking at each other across more darkness than this. I knew something was wrong but I still wasn’t prepared… I’d never seen anything like it. He seemed… scared.
“I killed a man.”
“Bruce—”
“I killed a man… almost. ‘Almost’ doesn’t matter. He’d be dead if not for… luck. I threw him off an electrical tower. If it had been closer to the ground or he’d fallen faster, or if I’d snapped out of it just a split second later…”
“But you—”
“Luck.”
“I wonder.”
He glared at that. Even in the dark I could feel the glare: How dare I dilute the gloom.
“Tell me what happened,” I said. I knew it was a long shot. He’ll never talk about the bad nights as a rule. But this was a little different. That look he had… scared. Scared, I could see now, of himself, of what he’d nearly done.
“It was… Rage. Insane, murderous rage. This woman, she’d found… the perfect murder weapon. A stone, some kind of runic stone, magic. Possessed an yone who touched it with a madness, sick, insane fury. And it… did other things… magic… whatever you drew from it, as long as it would drive the killing… All she had to do was get someone to touch the stone, point them at her victim and wait…”
I took a deep breath. At least now I understood what happened, why he was in such a state. I wasn’t at all sure how to address it, what he needed to be able to step away from it to let it heal.
“Wow, a trifecta: Murder, Madness and Magic, the three things you hate most of anything in the world.”
No grunt.
“And yet, after all that, this demonically clever woman with the perfect plan and the magic rock—”
“Stopped.”
“—lives.”
“Yes. She’s in Arkham.”
Still no grunt.
“My point is: you didn’t cross that line. Even with her, even after the trifecta.”
“Of course not,” he said.
“Of course not,” I repeated. I really hoped he would say more. I really hoped he would say “Because I don’t kill. Because Batman doesn’t kill.” He had to say something to get past this. I didn’t think “of course not” was going to be enough.
“When… it happened. When I tossed the perp off that tower, the thought that, that brought me back, snapped me out of it: He was only the first. The rage didn’t subside when I pushed him; it exploded. I would kill them all, all the criminals, everywhere. That’s all it took, that one split second I could see the wrongness of it, the madness cracked open and… I was free of it. I leapt and fired a line, accelerated my fall to intercept him, last second. It was luck.”
“And then you went after her. And she’s in Arkham now and not the morgue because…?”
“Let’s get some sleep.”
“Alright,” I sighed. I didn’t think there was the slightest chance of that happening, but I rearranged myself and the covers, preparing to settle in. He laid back and I curled into the crook of his arm, put a hand on his chest and closed my eyes.
“Goodnight, Kitten.”
“Goodnight, my Dark…”
Something was wrong. I felt a cold shiver. I didn’t know what at first. Something was just… wrong. I thought of Azrael for some reason, the Imposter, in that cowl, pretending he was Batman. It was that same sick feeling, a crazy kind of panic sparking deep beneath the surface, ready to erupt any second but held in check for the moment by the cold shiver getting colder by the minute.
My fingers were so cold… against the warmth of Bruce’s chest… and then the realization came, right underneath those cold fingertips, I knew what was wrong.
“When did these heal?” I whispered. “Bruce, the scars on your chest…” Four parallel scratches. Mine. They’ve been there for years. Now suddenly—
I’ve never been afraid of him. Not of Batman and certainly not of Bruce. But at that moment, I couldn’t even know if this was Bruce. He got out of bed in icy silence, walked into the bathroom and turned on the light. I only saw a bit of color reflected in the mirror, flesh tone, blur of movement, more flesh tone. Then he came back. With the additional light from the bathroom I could see at once, the scars were all gone. His chest, legs, back… all completely unscathed.
He got back into bed . When he spoke his voice was almost… ashamed.
“I told you the runestone was magic. It would give whatever you drew from it to further the killing. I overturned a jeep that was coming right at me; I could walk through gunfire like through… raindrops. The bullets passed right thr—”
“The scars, Bruce. What happened to them?”
“The first ‘murder weapon’ this woman created with the stone, I fought him. I fought him four times last night trying to keep between him and his victims. The stone made him strong. I was pretty banged up by the end of it… after I touched it, I… the first thing I did was… heal.”
“Ah.”
“Fractured bones, cuts from the fight. I needed… in the madness, I felt I needed to be strong in order to… It must have healed… everything.”
“I see.”
He didn’t say anything else for the rest of the night. He didn’t really have to. Bruce hates magic. He’s a scientist; he has a rational mind. And he respects natural law even more, if possible, than manmade ones. Magic lets someone cheat those laws, and he hates it.
In one night, he’d been touched by murder, by madness and by magic. And that was bad enough. Now it seemed there was going to be a permanent reminder of the taint.
He was quiet this morning when we got up. Not silent but… definitely brooding.
And I still haven’t heard a grunt.
The elevators opened and Lois crossed the newsroom crisply, noticing that the desk across from hers was as empty as when she’d left for lunch. Clark still hadn’t shown up yet. What’s worse, he hadn’t come home since leaving the night before to check on some earthquake in South America somewhere. It was really nothing new, this kind of thing happened all the time, but that didn’t stop her from worrying. Well, okay, not worrying, because “worrying” made her sound like some whining, nervous house frau… but there was always that grumble in the pit of her stomach whenever Clark was gone too long…
Not that you’d ever know it by looking at her. Externally, she was the same unflappable Lois: just another day that her husband was exceedingly late. She bypassed the cubicles, proceeded straight into Perry White’s office and dropped a “doggie bag” the size of a phonebook onto his desk.
“Dateline Metropolis: Beef is Back,” she said dryly.
The editor looked up at her, then down at the bag.
“I sent you to interview Fickly.”
“I did, Perry. Former Meteors Coach, three-time championship winner, now celebrity restaurateur Riff Fickly. The guy just opened a steakhouse in downtown Metropolis, Perry, did you think he was going to let me interview him in his garden? He made me come to lunch. He made me order their specialty: That’s the remains of a 48 oz steak in that bag. If you finish it, you get your picture taken and put up on the wall.”
“Long as you got the interview.”
“Be a pal, Perry, next time some puff piece like this comes along, give it to Green.”
“Green would’ve just interviewed Fickly. You’ll be bringing me features for the next month on Atkins, mad cow, the ranchers’ lobby, and other influences shaping the American diet.”
Lois grinned.
“So this assignment wasn’t punishment for Clark and Luthor?”
Perry handed back the bag.
“Give this to Jimmy, my cholesterol can’t take it.”
Lois took the bag and started to leave when Perry finally spoke again.
“No, Lois, it wasn’t punishment. I forgave you for marrying Kent in the first place and screwing up my newsroom with romance. I forgave him for that story on Luthor and bringing the wrath of the White House down on us. And I even forgave you that expose on mismanagement at LexCorp, although God knows losing all that advertising hurt us right on top of the White House thing. The only thing I won’t forgive is this leave of absence business, taking up vacation time for a damn fool—So your husband has to go to Gotham for a few weeks! You’re a liberated woman, Lois! Why do you have to go with him?”
“Shopping.”
“Excuse me?”
“Great shopping in Gotham, Perry. And good restaurants—many of which serve something more than nine different cuts of red meat. Usually I only get a weekend trip a few times a year, but with this publisher talking to Clark about writing a book, what more excuse do I need?”
Perry grunted.
“Get out of my office. You’re on deadline for that interview.”
“Love you too, Chief,” she chirped.
Returning to her desk, Lois heard more muffled strains of “O, For-tu-na!” from Jimmy’s desk, the giggling of several interns, and finally an excited debate about whether the fight was over Nightwing, Riddler, or Two-Face. “Don’t you read the Tattler—” “But the Post says—” “hotwing and smokinggun both say—”
That did it. Clark’s disappearing act, Perry’s agitation and a pound of bleeding-rare cow sitting like a lump of lead in her stomach she couldn’t do anything about, but the Porky’s shower room boys on top of that? No. That was one nuisance too many, and a nuisance she could easily remove.
She stepped determinedly into the cubicle and snapped off the monitor. “It is one thing to be addle-minded adolescents,” she announced, “It is quite another to aspire to a career in journalism and not know the difference between legitimate sources and the publicity stunts of some trashy tabloid…”
While the monitor was dark, the video file played on and the speakers punctuated Lois’s tirade with a flourish of trumpets and a cacophony of spirited cat-screeches.
The interns giggled anew.
And Lois looked guiltily towards Perry White’s office.
“I’m sorry, Perry, the first amendment was fine when I left for Gotham.”
In a lazy corner of Riverside Park, a crawling vine of hedera helix inched underneath a picnic blanket and coiled around the sleeping student’s backpack. It extracted her laptop, returned to Ivy’s secluded lair, and waited. The other plants were attempting to soothe her rage as best they could, administering calming spritzes of pollen and aloe vera rubs.
When Ivy noticed the vine’s return, it showed her the laptop and, at her signal, smashed it against the nearest tree.
“Nicely done,” she said with an approving nod. “Enough is enough, my dear Flora, enough is enough. There comes a point when the healthiest flower has absorbed all the fertilizer it can take, when it senses in its very petals that if it is subjected to one more atom of manure, its delicate green insides will simply explode!
“I am Gaia’s Chosen One, Nature’s own Vessel of Green! It is my prerogative to have any man I please. And it’s not as if I tried to actually seduce Sly, I was just amusing myse lf with a little flirting, when that insane Roxy Rocket pounced on me like some kind of crazed harpy!”
The plants listened respectfully, which made their company so much more comforting than her so-called friends and colleagues at the Iceberg.
Ivy considered herself too regal to brawl if she could avoid it. She realized she may have come to rely, just a tad, on her plants and enslaved drones to do the fighting for her in most situations, and for that reason Roxy was able to partially get the upper hand for a time in the earliest phase of their battle.
“But I rallied,” she told the flowerbeds, “I got in a few good licks at least before it was over. It was just bad luck that we were outside by then, out of range of the Iceberg gawkers and those damned video cameras.”
A Clematis returned from its foray into the park proper and offered her a camcorder and a small PDA—which she ordered smashed and their electronic carcasses dropped into a heap of similar inorganic mulch at the base of a tree.
The Iceberg grapevine and that monstrous videotape spreading over the internet faster than Florax Fungus made it seem like she had had her ass handed to her! By Roxy Rocket no less! And that was not to be endured.
She would find a way to settle this. She would bring this city to its knees once and for all. First the Iceberg, then all of Gotham!
Poison Ivy was Nature Incarnate, Gaia’s Chosen Vessel of Green, and Gaia’s Vessel would not be made a laughing stock!
“Daily Planet. Lane.”
Normally, Clark couldn’t help but chuckle at his wife’s “business greeting”. Today, he just managed a light smile.
“Hello, Lane. This is your husband.”
“Hey, Smallville.” It was without fanfare or excitement, but Clark knew her better than that. It was too casual. She was relieved, overly relieved, to be hearing from him. He mentally kicked himself for not calling sooner. “So, you planning on coming in today or should I dump your already cold coffee?”
“Actually, I need you to tell Perry that I’m working from home today. Tell him I’ve been talking to the Chilean Ambassador all morning and I’ll have a story on the earthquake on his desk by press-time.”
“Sure, make me the Fall Gal,” Lois replied sarcastically. He could tell that she was still concerned about him; she’d no doubt seen the AP newswires about the earthquake in Chile and its devastating results—312 dead, over 1200 injured.
“Of course,” he answered, trying to allay her fears. Over the course of their marriage—actually, ever since she’d known the truth about who he was—they’d had many phone conversations that went this way. She always justified it by explaining that they never knew who could be listening on the line, but he knew that part of it was her own stubbornness in expressing her real concern, especially over the phone. So they always played this little game of sarcastic banter and innocent reply, though underneath it all, they were having a completely different conversation.
“Fine. I’ll do your dirty work for you, Smallville. But you’d better be really nice to me when I get home,” she teased, though what he heard was: “I missed you last night.”
“Thanks, honey,” he responded cheerily. The line was silent for a moment, then he quietly added, “I love you, Lois.”
He could almost feel her heartache over the silent line.
“I love you too, Clark.”
They shared another few seconds of silence, then she hung up the phone. He pressed a small button, turni ng off his JLA Comm unit. He hated using it for personal calls, but it wasn’t like he would be getting a cellular phone signal on the summit of Mt. Everest.
He should be back at the Daily Planet newsroom by now—the Superman job was over and he could resume the Clark Kent part of his day. Most days, he actually reveled in the controlled chaos of the DP Bullpen. He called it the Human Work Ethic in its Purest Form, and he found a strange sense of comfort amidst that flurry of activity. But considering he’d just spent the better part of twelve hours sifting through five hundred tons of rubble and debris, only to retrieve dead body after dead body after dead body… the thought of spending the rest of the day surrounded by bustling humanity was a daunting and difficult notion.
Even for Superman.
He took a deep breath of thin mountain air. When it came to “getting away from it all,” there really weren’t many places quite like the top of the tallest mountain in the world. He glanced around the summit, noting the other reason why he enjoyed coming up here. It was tradition for every expedition to the top of Everest to leave something behind—a small token or marker indicating their successful climb to the famous peak. Each one was different and each one seemed to reflect the personality of the party it represented: small flags and banners with the hand-written names of climbers past, a used oxygen canister, a spare glove, even a small metal lunchbox with (Clark noted with a small smile) a picture of Superman on the cover. To Clark, each of these markers indicated the pinnacle of human achievement, the fulfilled promise of the best the human race had to offer. And today, it represented something else as well: man’s ability to conquer the harsh reality of nature… a point in stark contrast to the previous night’s activities.
He knelt down in the snow, examining a small cluster of the bright canvas pennants. This set were Sherpa prayer flags, each displaying a symbol, not of a distant god or mythological beast, but denoting some aspect of the enlightened human mind: compassion, perfect action, fearlessness. His thoughts turned to another example of the peak of human achievement, of what one man with drive, desire and dedication could accomplish without the benefit of superpowers or metagene enhancement. One that held a much more personal meaning to Clark.
Bruce.
Clark and Lois would be in Gotham City in a few days. He decided that he would call Bruce when he got home and set up a lunch or dinner date for him and Lois with Bruce and Selina, a nice casual meal enjoyed in the company of friends. Besides, he thought with a chuckle, Bruce hated it when Clark came to Gotham without telling him first.
Superman’s cape tugged hard on his broad shoulders, the end snapping violently in the harsh wind. There was something… odd about the wind today. It wasn’t the hardest wind Clark had ever experienced up on that peak, but it felt strange: constantly shifting directions as if it couldn’t make up its mind which way to blow. For the first time in his many visits to the summit, he felt like he could actually feel the chillness of the air.
Then, suddenly, the small canvas pennant he had been reading ripped away from its metal post, dancing and twisting in the violent wind until it disappeared in the harsh glare of sunlight on snow. Superman stared at the now-empty pole, a shiver running up his spine.
Miriam Nash was too experienced a witch to ignore signs and portents when they quite literally appeared on her doorstep. She thought it nothing but bad luck when the taxi splashed her legs as she left her apartment that morning. She made her usual stop at Brice’s for a bagel and coffee, and didn’t even notice tha t she stepped in some fresh tar on their sidewalk as she juggled her wallet, bag and umbrella on her way out. It was only when she reached her destination and was unlocking the door that she paused to wipe the grime off her shoes.
She proceeded inside, switched on the lights, switched off the mechanical alarm, and murmured “Arcquix conquiescete” to disarm the magical protections she set in place to protect her business overnight. She set her coffee and bagel out on the counter, as she always did, hung up her coat, and then returned to the front door to swap out the sign THE CURIOSITY SHOP: Antiques and Curios from around the world for THE CURIOSITY SHOP: We’re Open.
It was then that she glanced down and saw she had coated the welcome mat with a ghastly streak of tarry grime. The customers who came by browsing for “antiques and curios” wouldn’t care, but her real customers, the ones for whom the antiques were merely cover, were attuned to signs and symbols. Those who sought out The Curiosity Shop as the finest Magic Shop east of New Orleans would not see the M in Welcome smeared with a bit of dirt from the street. They would see Mannaz Reversed, a powerful symbol of depression, mortality, and despair. She simply couldn’t have a welcome mat that announced to her customers “Expect no help within.” She would have to get a new doormat.
She returned inside, thinking to go out and buy one at lunch. Just before lunch, however, she received a delivery. Novelty mugs, mouse pads, plaques and banners, garden stones—and doormats. 15 doormats, $6.50 wholesale/$9.95 retail, reading: By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.
?
Tim had situated himself at workstation 2, taking Jowls the desktop gargoyle from his backpack and setting him neatly atop the computer screen, then setting a bag of Combos next to the keyboard, when he heard the rhythmic squeak of the uneven parallel bars. He got up from the chair and walked casually to the mini-fridge, where he could peek into the gymnasium.
“Oh, hi Selina,” he called with a wave when he saw who it was. “I didn’t think you liked working out down here.”
She twisted, pulled into a handstand perfectly perpendicular to the top bar, then swung down and arched neatly through the bars, landing on the mat where she could converse more easily with Tim.
“I don’t very often,” she said sliding her legs apart and dipping one hand down to touch the floor while pointing the other to the ceiling. “I prefer working out in my own suite. But today, well, Bruce needs some space and I’m giving it to him.”
Tim paused for a moment, stunned, while Selina held the yoga posture then bent her forward knee and stretched as if she were warming up for a run. He heard himself burbling “Oh. Space. Yeah, well,” when he decided to forget he was in the Batcave and instead assumed rooftop discipline: pay no attention to the spectacular female body clad in purple leather—or in this case, purple leotard—focus instead on the dangerous criminal and what she might be up to.
Except the dangerous criminal was up to a half-moon posture that made her look like the hood ornament on a very expensive car.
“I’m, ah, downloading some, ah, research paper- research from- download for- paper on- Scottish play,” he managed and left the gymnasium hurriedly. He wiped a bead of imaginary sweat from his brow and patted Jowls on the head.
“We’re, uh, going to pretend to do some research on Shakespeare for a while,” he whispered to the gargoyle, “just play along and we’ll look for that other file later.”
Miriam was quite certain the episode with her doormat was a portent. She wanted to learn more, but she had strict rules about consulting the dark arts during business hours. It would have taken a far more dramatic upheaval—perhaps if the walls started wailing or oozing blood—to cause her to lock her doors early or to risk non-initiated customers walking in on anything they might deem odd. So she sat reading a magazine, THE GOTHAMITE, through most of the day, although the essays of this special correspondent, Clark Kent, weren’t exactly her cup of tea. Very little in the GOTHAMITE conformed to Miriam’s idea of light reading. But it was the kind of thing customers liked to see behind the counter of an antiques shop. The discreet ad she placed in the back brought business to both the curios and magic half of her store. And the cartoons were amusing enough.
One cartoon in particular, from the current issue, caught her eye: A Batmanlike figure on a rooftop hunched next to a gargoyle with the caption “Rough day, Gus?” Miriam reached for her scissors and clipped it out. It was just the kind of thing to tape to the side of a bookcase to amuse her customers. The knickknack crowd would see a simple GOTHAMITE cartoon, but her other customers would recognize the gargoyle as Maxilas Do Blostiban, Guardian of the Fifth Circle and aspect of Hel, the daughter of Loki.
Though she was anxious to get home and investigate the portents, Miriam still waited attentively on her customers: there was the girl, about sixteen, who never did work up the nerve to ask about the magickal wares that brought her to The Curiosity Shop in the first place, who browsed and browsed and nervously twirled her hair around her finger… Miriam wasn’t unsympathetic, but she had firm rules and she kept to them. She would not reveal the magick side of her business to any who didn’t ask directly… Finally the girl bought an Art Deco ashtray. Miriam shrugged. If they couldn’t work up the gumption to help themselves, there was really nothing she could do. The next customer was a tourist that decided a Vessel of Merĝląy would make the perfect “slop bowl” for his Regency tea set. And just before closing, a different breed of tourist stopped in for clove candles and mugwort. After a few minutes of knowing conversation, Miriam realized this customer had no need of mugwort. He had sought her out the way another type of enthusiast might visit a dealer in classic motorcycles or rare books. She easily persuaded him that he needed a better souvenir from the famous Curiosity Shop than herb candles and mugwort, so she showed him the new charoite gems from Russia (“Excellent for enhancing magickal powers, helps to recognize and integrate negative energies, very good for healing…”) and rather than bargain when he offered a lower price, she tossed in a few ametrines.
By the time she left for the day, Miriam had almost forgotten the troubling portents of the morning, but the sight of the doormat on her front step… “Something Wicked This Way Comes” …brought a swift and distasteful reminder.
Arriving home, the first thing she did was set out candles, incense and Tarot cards to learn more—but her cat, Greymalkin, would have none of it. Greymalkin was no demon familiar; she was a rambunctious cat with the playful temperament of a kitten. On those occasions when Greymalkin decided the Tarot were her playthings, Miriam knew any attempt at a reading would lead to chewed cards, overturned candles, and incense ash tracked across her tablecloth in the form of tiny gray pawprints.
Miriam picked up the cat and shut her in the bedroom—but she put away the Tarot cards all the same. It was a foolish witch that would proceed with a reading that had been disrupted in such a manner. Instead she tried casting runes, but the results were cryptic. Exasperated, Miriam made one final attempt: she consulted her customer records for a phone number and called one she knew to be a powerful wizard. If Jason would form a secondary for a seeing ritual… While she listened to the phone ring on the other end of the line, Miriam opened her bedroom door and Greymalkin shot out in a dizzying blur of gray at the exact moment the other phone picked up.
..:: This is Jason Blood, ::.. the earpiece intoned while her cat charged across the table, scattering runestones and spilling candlewax ..:: Like Dante in Purgatorio, I journey direct towards the sunset, hand to brow to screen the superflux of light… I’m out of town right now, but I do check the machine regularly. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. ::..
Miriam hung up the telephone with a disgusted snort. She decided she didn’t really want to know what mighty force was headed for Gotham.
Passenger: Kent, Clark Seat 3B FC GA17
Clark took the tickets from under the Daily Planet fridge magnet and slid them into his jacket pocket, then he returned to the front door and smiled quietly to himself.
There were many things Clark adored about his wife: her fire, her tenacity, her brilliance, her passion… but over the years, he’d come to realize that it was the little things, the quirks, that delighted him the most. The way she drummed her fingers on her keyboard when she couldn’t get the phrasing of a particular idea. The way she would pick all of the red M&Ms out of the bag to eat first. Her meticulous, almost scientific, method for preparing her coffee each morning.
Her inability to go anywhere for more than five days without packing at least four suitcases…
Clark couldn’t stifle his grin as he looked at the mountain of luggage piled up by the front door to their apartment. The folded, hanging-style suitcase leaning next to the wall was his, but all of the others—one medium-sized wheeled case, two soft-side bags and a handbag-sized makeup case—belonged to Lois. He lowered the laptop bag that he’d been carrying from his shoulder down on the floor next to his suitcase and turned back toward the bedroom just in time to see Lois emerge from the hallway. She was hefting a huge travel bag, a behemoth of a hard-sided suitcase-thing from her college days (before suitcases came with sissy attachments like “wheels”). From the way she struggled with both hands to half-carry/half-drag it across the floor, Clark figured it must have been packed to its limits with unrefined lead bricks.
Clark moved to help her and received a vicious stare he seldom saw outside of The Slab’s Maximum Security Wing. She defiantly lugged the monstrous suitcase over to the door and dropped it with a resounding thud, then turned and looked at her husband with a sweet and gentle smile like she’d just traipsed daintily across the living room with a basket of flowers instead of Goliath’s handbag. Clark returned smile for smile as he shot a quick glance at the pile of suitcases.
“You know, we’re only going to Gotham for two weeks. We’re not moving there.”
“And they say Superman doesn’t have a sense of humor,” Lois replied flatly. She patted his cheek sarcastically and headed back down the hall.
“There’s more?” Clark called after her.
“It’s Gotham City, Clark.” Lois’s voice carried out from the bedroom where she was putting h e last few items into her carry-on bag. “And we have no idea what all we’ll be doing while we’re there. While your fashion requirements may be limited to the grand ‘Tie/No Tie’ debate, mine are much more specific.” She re-emerged from the bedroom and dropped the last bag onto the pile. “I just want to be prepared.”
She surveyed the mountain of canvas and leather, double-checking to make sure everything was ready to go. “What I don’t get, is how you got two weeks worth of stuff jammed into just one bag.”
“Well, the hotel does have laundry and dry cleaning service,” Clark explained, only to be interrupted by an impatient…
“Clark, whatever you don’t pack for is what Bruce is going to ask us to.”
“…Besides, if I’m missing anything or need anything I don’t have, I can always zip back here and grab it. I can do the same for you if—”
She stopped him with a glare. After the mismatched shoe incident in L.A. two years ago, she’d declared a moratorium on Superman making emergency clothes runs on her behalf. Wanting to get away from the theme of their respective luggage needs, Lois changed the subject.
“Did you get in touch with Bruce? Are we getting together at some point?”
“Yes. We’re having lunch with them tomorrow afternoon.”
“So Captain Anti-social was actually agreeable to having a meal with us in public?”
“More than agreeable,” Clark explained. “He was downright excited about it.”
Clark had called to set up a lunch date for himself, Lois, Bruce and Selina. He hid from Lois his own trepidation at Bruce’s upbeat response. Rather than indifferent acceptance or even a polite rebuff, Bruce had responded with overwhelming enthusiasm—a full-bore blast of Foppish cheer. Clark had seen Bruce that way before, usually when trying to divert a prying eye… classic overcompensation by The Fop… But hearing it aimed in Clark’s own direction, it was a bit… unnerving. Clark figured that Bruce must have had company in the manor, overhearing the phone conversation.
“Excited?” Lois said with a smirk. “Bruce? Are you sure you dialed the right number?”
He shot her a look of mock disgust, then smiled. “Actually, he told me that he’d make all the arrangements. I’ll call him tonight when we reach the hotel and get all the pertinent details.”
“Lunch with the Billionaire Waynes. You could get two whole chapters for your book out of one meal,” Lois joked.
“Funny you should put it like that. ‘Billionaire Waynes,’ I mean…”
“What?” Lois looked at him quizzically for a moment, then her eyes widened in realization. “No! Not a chance! I told you a million times, no! I’m not going to do it!”
“Why not?”
“Why not?! Let’s see, ignoring the fifteen thousand glaringly obvious reasons, I’ll go with the easiest of all: I don’t know her that well, Clark.”
“Oh, c’mon, Lois. It’s just a friendly, harmless inquiry.”
“Let me make sure I’m crystal clear on this: you want me, your loving and adoring wife, to ask Catwoman—claws, whips, already-took-me-hostage-once Catwoman, the same Catwoman who polished off two and a half bottles of champagne after the ‘Mrs. Wayne’ incident at Dick and Barbara’s wedding—you want me to ask her when she and Bruce are going to settle down and start making with the baby bat-cats?!”
“You don’t have to put it like that.”
“It does n’t matter how I put it, Clark, that’s how she’s going to hear it! And I really don’t feel like spending my two weeks in Gotham in the hospital getting my innards surgically reattached!”
“Look, you don’t have to come right out and ask her. Just… feel her out a bit. See if she’s receptive at all to the idea. What’s the worst that can happen?”
“She takes me hostage again,” was the deadpan reply. “And this time I don’t think she’ll be nearly so reasonable about it. I was an innocent bystander that time. I’d hate to think what she could do to me if she was legitimately pissed. Best case scenario: she tells Bruce, Batman goes berserk, and it’s all my fault. CORRECTION: it’s all your fault! I can see the headlines now: Superman pisses off Batman. Gotham in Ruins.”
Clark chuckled. “If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that one.”
They were interrupted by three short buzzes from the intercom. It was the signal from the doorman that their taxi had arrived. Lois deflated at the sound and shook her head.
“There’s the cab, flyboy. Keep your nickels and take those bags downstairs.”
Clark bent down and effortlessly scooped up all of the suitcases, slinging several over each shoulder and picking up one in each hand. The whole time, his eyes never left hers. Lois wondered for a moment if he was purposefully making it look easy… a little show of superhuman testosterone. But she knew him better than that. He stood there for a moment, just staring at her, then finally responded in a reserved tone.
“I’m not telling you that you have to do this,” he said, “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I’m just asking. Please. For me.”
She stared back into his eyes, those eyes that she could never say no to…
“Fine,” she finally relented. “I’ll tell you what, I’ll use the word ‘wife’ in a sentence just to see if she breaks out in hives. But if she scratches my eyeballs out and serves them in the evening pâté, I’m holding you personally responsible.”
He smiled lightly and leaned in and kissed her cheek. “Thanks, Hon. You’re the greatest.” She opened the door to their apartment and he strolled out, looking like a human luggage rack.
She closed the door behind him then made one last pass through the apartment. Her mind struggled with what exactly she was going to say to Selina—to Catwoman. Clark’s great and glorious plan: Lois would talk to Selina while he himself talked to Bruce.
He’d been like this since Dick and Barbara’s wedding, trying to get all of his unmarried friends to tie the knot. It was cute and charming in a way, but now that he’d progressed into full-scale, multi-tier sneak attacks, maybe it was time to sit down and have a little heart-to-heart.
Although, there might be no need. Once Bruce was finished with him, Clark might put this whole crusade behind him anyway. That was the one thing she could take some solace in: as bad as she was going to get it from Selina, Clark would be getting it ten times worse from Bruce.
“‘Come to Gotham’, he says. ‘It’ll be fun’, he says. ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’, he says…”
She snapped off the lights and headed for the door, muttering to herself: “Honestly, you’d think he’d know better by now.”
Something I’ve learned since getting involved with the bat family is that there is more common ground between crimefighters and rogues than either group would care to admit. Example: Everybody with a Gotham nightlife, everybody, both crimefighters and rogues, has their own personal set of mysteries. Naturally “Who is Batman” is a common question whenever rogues gather, and “What drives Joker” seems to get a lot of lip service among the bats. But those are for show. The real mysteries, the ones we ponder in private, are more eclectic. One of mine for example: Some time before I die I would like to find out how, in the name of all things feline and furry, Pamela Isley got the idea we’re friends.
Setting aside her little habit of trying to kill Batman—and for that matter, seducing Bruce—there is still the reckoning for many, many nights at the Iceberg when I had troubles of my own (who doesn’t), but rather than unwind in the company of friends, I had to sit there listening to Harvey, Eddie, or both singing The Ballad of Humoring Pamela.
So Queen Chlorophyll has never exactly been at the top of my Christmas card list. And yet, she called that morning, insisting she had to come over to talk because I was “the only friend that can help now.” What could I do? The Humoring Pamela Principle pretty much demands that you go along when she gets that worked up. But it did present a bit of a dilemma in terms of where to meet. In the mood Bruce was in, the last thing I wanted to risk was hitting the “criminals in my house” nerve. But meeting her out in the garden—and letting Miss “No man can resist my leafy beauty” see firsthand what a large and lovely garden the manor has? No. So it had to be the house, and that's when I had one of those revelations-by-necessity. It occurred to me that if Pammy’s visit did happen to set Bruce off, it might be the best thing for him, bleed off a bit of that steam before it built up enough pressure to blow up the whole radiator.
But the minute I walked into the morning room to greet my visitor, I saw I had been worrying about the wrong radiator. Ivy was an absolute basket case.
It started with “Heya, Catty” and an awkward rise from her chair, offering me her hand like she was applying for a loan or something. This embarrassed us both equally, I think. I asked her to sit down and took a seat myself—the one behind Martha Wayne’s old writing desk, which didn’t exactly ease the loan manager feeling. Then she started to ramble—about the plants, no surprise there—but instead of the usual complaints about injustices done to her babies (I had forgotten to tell Alfred to remove a vase of cut flowers), I heard:
“…was really Ivan that started it. The best goddamn flytrap ever bred, Catty, Nature’s masterpiece, that was Ivan. Nobody could wrap his tentacles around that goddamn interfering Bat like Ivan. So what is any good mother to do? I let him do what he did best. Not my fault he was so darn good at it. I was proud of him…”
I bobbed my leg impatiently. I had heard this all before. Soon it would build to a great crescendo about Two-Face the plant-killer and 22 imaginative uses for hedge trimmers. I wanted her to get on with it so I could remind her that Harvey was a friend of mine and shove her out the door. Except instead of the usual segue about Harvey, she started talking about Roxy: She’d had her ass handed to her—by Roxy Rocket! It was not to be endured. And now she was a laughing stock. Also not to be endured. It had to end and it had to end now, not later, now, before one more mouth-breathing cretin got it into his head that that sorry creature getting tossed around by her hair was Ivy the Irresistible, Gaia’s Chosen and Mother of all things Green. She had to get back i nto shape so she could hold her own in a physical confrontation as well as any other rogue of her stature.
That’s the gist, anyway. The literal text, believe it or not, wasn’t quite that coherent. I honestly didn’t know what to say. It’s not every day “Gaia’s Chosen” calls up wanting you to be her personal trainer.
I told her I’d think about it.
I hadn’t meant to; I was going to say no. I was about to say no, when she asked about that tape.
“You’ve seen that awful video?”
“I know about it,” I admitted, “I’m sorry.”
What else could I say? I certainly wasn’t going to tell her I’d seen it. I’d seen the original feeds Bruce pulled off the Fab! cameras at the Iceberg, but when none of it showed up in the broadcast, we all figured that was that. But someone in the Fab! offices must have made a bootleg, and before long, it was the number one download on kazaa.
“Then you understand,” she declared, reclaiming a bit of the old royal Pammy, “You’ve had it happen to you. Been held up for these no account… vermin… MEN to drool over with their sick lowly fantasies, and these stupid, ignorant fools going along with it like… like your degradation is some kind of ENTERTAINMENT!!!” The brave grasp at the old royal Pammy was short-lived. She had shrieked the last word at a volume Bruce was sure to hear. Although to be honest, at that point I didn’t much care what Bruce thought.
She was right. I had been there.
“So you see why you’re really the only one that can help me out, Catty. Getting back your dignity and adding a couple style points to boot, that’s your thing.”
She was right. I had been there… and it was awful.
“I’ll think about it, Pam,” I said, “Meantime, maybe you could stop by the library and get yourself some Tai Chi videos or something, okay?”
Lois, like any star reporter, had logged enough travel time to become an expert on airline food. Metropolis to Gotham was a fairly short flight, a “snack flight” rather than full food service. She was expecting a muffin and probably a bag of pretzels. She hadn’t allowed for the fact that Gothamite Publishing was sending them first class, where the Daily Planet’s limited expense accounts only covered economy flights. So she was quite delighted when the expected muffins came warm, served with tongs from a lined basket instead of sealed in plastic. She was floored when the stewardess returned a moment later with a tray of miniature pastries, offering “Éclair, petit fours, cannoli?” Lois watched Clark take one of each. She would have liked an éclair, but having already taken a muffin… They would be two weeks in Gotham; she couldn’t afford to start splurging yet if she wanted to get home the same dress size she was now. She waited for Clark to look across the aisle and swapped his chocolate éclair for her muffin. Then she turned to the window and nibbled her treat, and allowed her thoughts to return to the question of that “friendly, harmless inquiry” he wanted her to make of Catwoman.
Like any good reporter, Lois catalogued what she knew about her subject. She recalled her first encounter with Catwoman: a robbery at LexCorp headquarters, thought to be impenetrable. That was going to be her story: a break in LexCorp, missing datafiles swiped from Luthor’s own computer while he was giving a tour to visiting VIP Bruce Wayne. Superman and Batman arrived almost immediatel y after the alarm sounded. Batman was certain it was Catwoman and that she was still in the building, and the chase was on. The next thing Lois knew, she was a hostage. While that had happened before, no other criminal that grabbed her was quite so straightforward about it: “I need leverage with the heroes and you need a story,” Catwoman had said. It made you feel lucky that she picked you.
It was lucky, as it turned out. Lois got her story all right, but she also got to see the bat-cat sparks up close and personal. That was a show in its own right, but it was the conversation it sparked later, when the women were alone again, that had a profound effect on Lois. Catwoman had spoken about “the man you want and the man you can have.” The cat burglar couldn’t know Clark Kent had proposed and Lois accepted—but that she still had doubts because of her feelings for Superman. That brief conversation with a thief in a mask—a thief who could take anything she wanted, except the one thing she wanted most—it silenced those doubts that had haunted Lois since the moment she said yes.
A few weeks later, Clark told her the truth. In the years since, whenever Lois thought of Catwoman, it was with a bittersweet sense of “Poor Kitty.” Lois had found she could ‘have her cake and eat it too’: Clark and Superman were one and the same. But Catwoman…
So, when they met again, when Catwoman saved the Justice League from Prometheus in full view of a hundred reporters, Lois reported the episode more accurately, and more flatteringly to Catwoman, than any of the others. Selina noticed, but she never knew why. Still, she told the world during her stage show about the one reporter in a hundred who got it right. She singled out Lois by name as living proof that journalists weren’t all lying maggots. She even proposed a “Lois Lane Preservation Society”—which always got a laugh because of Lois’s well-known penchant for getting herself into trouble in pursuit of the big story.
And now, thanks to Clark, the advocate of the “Lois Lane Preservation Society” was most likely going to shred her like yesterday’s newspaper.
I didn’t literally mean I would think about it. It was something to say, something softer than a definite ‘no’ to tide over an awkward moment and get Ivy out of the house.
I hadn’t seriously considered helping her until I went back to the cave. Tim was there. He had his feet up on the desk, the keyboard in his lap with a bag of snacks, and in front of him, playing in slow motion on a cluster of three computer screens was what Gaia’s Chosen so recently referred to as “that awful video.” It had changed since I saw the Fab! feeds. There was a soundtrack now, and a cartoon Joker prancing around in the background—and there was a horny teenager sniggering at it. It was that last that struck a chord. He wasn’t “Tim” or “Robin” at that point. He was the life support for a penis, a poster boy for “men are pigs” getting his jollies at Pam’s expense. Pammy is no model of common sense, understanding, or emotional maturity, and most grief she brings on herself. But by all accounts except Roxy’s, the only thing she did that night was go to a bar, have a drink, and flirt with the bartender.
I removed my shoes and padded noiselessly into the main chamber of the Batcave, stationing myself directly behind Tim. I watched him watching the tape for a minute, then pointed towards the screen just inside his peripheral vision.
“See that hair-pulling move is something you really want to be able to defend against,” I said, making him jump. “Because if Roxy ever got your long flowing locks tangled up like that until you bumped your own tit against the jukebox that way, the cartoon Joker would be too busy laughing at the pair of you to notice somebody sneaking up right behind him.”
I rumpled his hair playfully then grabbed a handful and pulled his head backwards to look up at me.
“And we wouldn’t want that, would we.”
“No, Ma’am,” he said, his tone a notch higher than usual.
“Good boy.”
That should have been the end of it. Tim made himself scarce, leaving me on my own in the cave again—with his gargoyle knickknack, a bag of cheese-filled pretzels, and the video of Pam and Roxy going at it in the background. The thing that gnawed at me while I cleaned up the workstation was less the images on the screen (although Ivy’s performance left a lot to be desired) as my own performance with Tim.
I’m not a mother hen. I’m a rooftop cat. Wagging a finger, “Now remember, Timmy, even a rogue is somebody’s daughter,” just isn’t my style.
So that’s why I agreed to help Pammy. If I didn’t like that tape—and I don’t—that was a right-thinking rogue’s way to respond: Toughen the silly flower blossom up a bit so she can punch back. Not tsk-tsking at Tim like some suburban soccer mom.
Bruce stared into the mirror, his face barely visible through the steam from his shower. It was no use—he couldn’t escape the thoughts of what had happened any longer. He had spent most of the day trying to ignore it, trying to focus on anything but the madness of the night before, but everything he did somehow seemed to remind him.
He spent a good deal of the morning in the study, catching up on his Wayne Enterprises e-mail and reading through several reports that Lucius sent. He sat through a twenty-minute teleconference with Lucius and the division chiefs discussing the quarterly earnings. Being in business mode had helped; it gave him something else to focus on. But every time he moved in his chair, every time he felt the cool cotton fabric of his shirt gliding smoothly over his pristine back instead of the rough ridges of scar tissue, a strange unease washed over him.
After lunch, he decided that the constant reminder he got from sitting in his high-back office chair was too much, so he chose to stand or pace instead—except that whenever he walked, he recognized the lack of that twinge above his left knee from an old gunshot wound. Frustrated, he spent the early part of the afternoon perusing his library. He had correctly identified the runes carved into the magical fetish as Nordic in design, so he read through several books on Norse mythology, trying to figure out where the runestone had come from or what kind of power the symbols represented. After turning a page resulted in a nasty paper cut and he realized that it was now the only marring mark on his body, he put the book back on the shelf and stormed out of the library in disgust.
Meditating helped a little. He sat in the lotus position on a mat in the Sun Room, taking in deep, rhythmic breaths as the afternoon sun bathed him in warm, glowing light. He was able to completely clear his mind, focusing on the peace of nothingness—until a bead of sweat rolled straight down his chest without being detoured by any cat-scratch scars. At that point, he gave up, came upstairs, and took a shower.
Now, standing in front of the bathroom mirror and staring at himself through the steamy haze, he decided that the only way he could come to grips with all of this was to think it through.
Each of those scars represented something. Each one told a story. They were a road map of his successes and failures over the years—physical reminders of all that he’d accomplished. He understood that the scars on his body were a part of his job; that they came with the territory—they were the price you paid. You couldn’t put your body through the kind of abuse he did night in and night out and not have the physical scars to prove it. He had accepted that from the beginning and, in some respects, had even come to appreciate those scars as indications of a job well done. And in the blink of an eye, they were gone. It’s like the slate was wiped clean and now he had to start over from scratch.
The worst part about all of it was that, physically, he felt fantastic. He felt rejuvenated, refreshed, in peak physical condition. It seemed ridiculous to be so unnerved by the previous night’s events when he felt so perfectly healthy and strong. He realized that what was making him so anxious was not entirely what had happened to him, but rather the method by which it happened.
Magic.
Bruce was a scientist, a rational, logical being. He believed in the rules and laws of science, and that everything had a logical and reasonable explanation. Fundamentally, nature existed and abided by those rules and everything adhered to those laws. The scientific guidelines of physics, biology, chemistry, they were all deeply rooted in proven laws of nature. Magic was a perversion of those rules. Magic broke those laws and circumvented those guidelines. Magic was a shortcut. Magic was… cheating. His rational mind railed against that perversion, but more than that, he understood the one unbreakable rule all magic-users acknowledged, but the significance of which none liked to admit…
“Master Bruce?”
The soft British voice tore him from his thoughts. He took a deep breath and walked out of the bathroom, one towel wrapped around his waist and another in his hand as he rubbed the wet hair on the side of his head.
“Yes, Alfred?” He strolled past the butler on his way around the bed, heading toward the closet.
“You wanted me to inform you…” The normally unflappable butler gasped lightly. “My word.”
Bruce froze and glanced back over his shoulder. “Alfred?”
“I’m sorry, sir. It’s just… your back…”
“I know,” Bruce replied with a disgusted grunt.
“If you don’t mind me asking, sir, what happened?”
Bruce relayed the entire story to Alfred just as he had to Selina the previous night—the runestone, the madness, the perp he almost killed, the woman responsible… and how the magic had somehow healed his scars. Alfred, who was just as logical and rational as Bruce, took it in stride. It was hard to disbelieve when the evidence was staring him in the face.
Once Bruce finished, Alfred thought for a moment, then responded. “Perhaps it would be best not to dwell on the ‘hows’ and the ‘whys’, sir, and simply accept the undeniable benefits.”
Bruce wanted to disagree, to debate the negative aspects of what had occurred, to explain in great detail the fifteen hundred ways this was all wrong… but he knew that Alfred was only trying to help.
“Perhaps,” was all Bruce could reply. “Anyway, what did you come here to tell me?”
Alfred took the hint: the discussion was over. He straightened, taking on a more professional tone. “You asked me to inform you when Miss Kyle’s, er, guest had departed. Miss Isley left the premises about fifteen minutes ago.”
Bruce’s face darkened. “Thank you, Alfred.”
“And I made the arrangements for tomorrow’s lunch as you requested. You have reservations at D’An nunzio’s for 12:30.”
“Ah. Thank you. That will be all, Alfred.”
“Thank you, sir.” Alfred paused for a moment, then bowed his head respectfully and left. Bruce dressed quickly, then stopped in the middle of the master bedroom and sat down on the corner of his bed, his mind still churning over everything that had happened. He considered Alfred’s words about the disappearance of his scars being a ‘benefit.’ They brought into sharp focus what was most unnerving him about the whole affair.
Bruce didn’t know a lot about magic. Any enemy, natural or magical, that he faced he fought the same way, using his own natural abilities and naturally honed skills. If a situation did call for magical intervention, there were always the Jason Bloods and Zatannas of the world to offer assistance. He saw no logical need to have more than a passing knowledge of what magic was and what it could do. But the one thing he did know about magic was that it too was subject to that one law of the Universe: you couldn’t really cheat. Magic was a lie. Oh it bent those natural laws all right, but there was always a price. Every practitioner admitted straight off that one of the primary precepts of magic was balance. But few of them really understood the significance of that concept. Every action had a consequence; every positive, a negative. Every blessing had a curse. Yin and Yang. Good and Evil.
Magic, like Nature, had a habit of balancing everything out. The anxiety he had been feeling all day was that sickening anticipation of waiting for the other shoe to drop. You can’t really cheat nature. So what would be the price of this healing that was forced on him in a moment of madness?
Batman was uncertain what to make of this new development. He was unsure exactly when Selina had stopped stealing, but he was aware that Catwoman continued to prowl the neighborhoods she considered her territory. The one time he’d asked what that prowling consisted of, he was treated to a Discovery Channel summary of cat behavior in the wild: How little time a leopard or jaguar spends hunting, compared to the constant surveying of their territory to note who else has passed through and what is going on. He didn’t press the issue. She was Catwoman, it’s what he loved about her, and Catwoman prowled the night.
When he first noticed her that night—that once-familiar movement, darkly purple and so enticingly round and graceful, on a distant roof—he merely watched for a moment, a pleasant tickle tugging the corner of his lip. This was the first time they had run into each other this way since their personal circumstances changed so radically. Bruce reflected on that for a moment, calculating the square footage of the city and the relative size of “her territories” and his patrol routes. It wasn’t really surprising. In a way, he was surprised they hadn’t crossed paths before now… then he thought no more about it.
Until an hour later when he saw her again—or thought he did. He realized at once that was too much of a coincidence. He must have imagined it. She was still on his mind from the earlier sighting, causing him to glimpse a pattern of color and movement where it didn’t exist.
When it happened a third time, he refused to dismiss it so easily. He was Batman. He trusted his senses. This is what he did. He was Batman, he patrolled his city, and the very act of patrolling meant being aware. He trusted his observations and he trusted his instincts.
“Lenses engage,” he barked, focusing his attention on the spot where he thought he saw movement—where he had seen dark, purple, round cat-m ovement. He scrutinized the spot as the lenses clicked into place, gazing with superhuman concentration as if the cowl systems required his will to function. “Infrared engage… magnify… magnify more.”
He waited.
Waited.
Waited.
Then he saw it. Her.
With lightning speed, he fired a line and swung into intercept position.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he began before his boots hit the rooftop. It was unlikely she heard more than the last word, but he didn’t care. She’d know the tone well enough, and the question was obvious under the circumstances. But she didn’t answer fast enough so he repeated, “I said what do you think you’re doing?”
She looked amused. Impossible woman.
“Busted, eh? Well, the junior bats never noticed. But then you were always better.”
“Catwo— Selina,” he wondered why his voice sounded so tired suddenly, “What in god’s name are you doing?”
She looked at him a long moment, an unfathomable look in her eye.
“I would have thought…” —it was obvious. Something she’d said often over the years when it had been obvious. Why else would someone be opening Tiffany’s safe at three in the morning. How many times had he heard it: “I would have thought it was obvious, Stud.”
“…it was obvious, Bruce.”
That was then. This was now.
“I was a bit worried you might go around trying to get all those scars back in a single night.”
Batman stared. He felt himself exhale, a pocket of air that should have been a grunt expelled as silent breath. It should have made him angry—following him, questioning his judgment—but all he could see was concern. She cared about him; it wasn’t something she’d ever hid well. They’d met on so many rooftops over the years, both aware what the other felt, both denying it. Now that it was all out in the open, well… well, of course, she could come out and say it if she wanted to. At home or in the cave, he wouldn’t have blinked. But here, on a rooftop, in masks, it wasn’t something he could grunt away. She was worried, and that’s why she was here. That’s why—he shook his head with an ironic twitch-smile as realization dawned—that’s why she’d let him be all day. He had wondered why she hadn’t come padding around with the pity and consolation. This was why. She knew Bruce would cope in his own way, and whatever that way was, it wouldn’t be anything where he could hurt himself. But Batman, Batman might do who-knows-what, so she would keep an eye on him.
He reached out and stroked her hair absently.
“Go home, Kitten. I’m fine.”
She looked skeptical, so he pulled her in and bent to kiss her forehead—opting at the last moment to kiss her lips instead. He told himself that was the more effective way to persuade her, but he was quite aware, as he tasted the faint raspberry of her lipstick, that that strategic edge was only an afterthought.
“Go home,” he repeated gently, “I’ll come back in one piece, I promise.”
Sore muscles were not a familiar experience for Poison Ivy. There was a curious ball of tight ache above each knee and a coiled gnawing sensation running up the back of each thigh.
“Catty’s fault” she muttered, double-checking the address on the small plastic bag from her pocket. Catty’s fau lt. Insisting on all those rolls before they even began the martial arts training. And why? Because the training would involve her getting thrown around a good deal (as if she hadn’t had enough of that by now!) and she needed to be able to fall safely. Ivy didn’t see why she should have to fall down at all. Catwoman was supposed to teach her how to throw other people around. Getting tossed around herself she could manage without any instruction. But Selina was insistent. That itself was annoying. Poison Ivy might be Nature Incarnate, but even she couldn’t tell a cat what to do. Especially when the cat was doing her a favor; that weakened Ivy’s position even more.
But the aching ball of tension in her back radiating out to her arms was enough to make anyone reconsider their options. She had to reverse the intolerable situation regarding her image and retake her place in the rogue pantheon. But it would be better if she could do it without punishing her body this way.
She had paced back and forth in her secluded glade in Riverside Park, pacing and thinking, thinking and pacing, all the while ignoring the cries of her beloved meadow grass as her heels pierced the soil.
When she realized what she had done, it brought a sharp reminder of another time: At the Highland Games, preoccupied with a setback, she had throttled an innocent bayleaf… The odd woman who came up to her then… who made her some kind of magical herbal concoction… Ivy had experienced a phenomenal boost in her powers that day; that witch’s brew enhanced her abilities enough to order ancient trees into battle. She never got the opportunity to test what other enhancements it might have made to her other powers. It would be worth finding out. If her more persuasive abilities could be enhanced sufficiently, she could undo the damage to her image without resorting to torturous exercise and aching limbs. And if not, maybe it would at least be enough to bring Catty around on this awful “rolling” business… If not, if that strange woman’s potions could do nothing at all to boost her pheromones, it would be enough to energize her as it had before. If she could rally the trees again: with all the trees from Riverside Park, Robinson Park, and Smokey Oval Park at her command, free will would be irrelevant.
A quick search turned up the plastic bag that had contained the herbs, and the tiny typed label glued to the back told her she would find the mysterious woman at The Curiosity Shop, 16th and Lexington.
Ivy looked from the bag to the sign on the door: THE CURIOSITY SHOP: WE’RE OPEN, and inside the glass doors she saw the petite woman she remembered from the Highland Games, with half-moon glasses and a mass of graying hair escaping in wild wisps from a neat, prim bun.
Nothing pleased Giovanni d’Annunzio quite so much as the name Bruce Wayne on his list of luncheon reservations—except possibly that same name on the list of dinner reservations. Giovanni was always delighted to put those two letters “BW” on his seating plan inside the little circle denoting the best table, and signify with his own initials that this placement was approved by Giovanni himself and was therefore untouchable by the rest of the staff.
As a customer, Bruce Wayne appealed to every aspect of the Giovanni’s nature: His money and fame meant any appearance, even a quiet dinner, might be written up in the press. But it was his social position that elevated him above the crass celebrities and nouveau riche that Giovanni-the-restaurateur might be happy to feed, but whom Giovanni-the-snob would never accept on par with true aristocrats. But beyond this, Bruce Wayne had one additional quality, one that Giovanni-the-Italian appreciated above all the others: the man was always accompanied by the most beautiful female companions. For years, each woman was more striking than the last, a seemingly endless parade of blonde and brunette, ever changing, and who could blame him. What man could choose from among such stunning creatures?
When he did finally settle on one woman for more than a week, the lady had several qualities besides her looks to recommend her: Selina spoke flawless patrician Italian, she appreciated his food and was not shy to say so in pithy and quotable terms, and she had brought royalty to d’Annunzio’s. Diana, Princess of Themyscira, did not entirely conform to Giovanni’s ideas of how nobility should conduct themselves. Certainly no European royals would show so much décolletage before five. But Giovanni decided to forget about that the moment Diana left the restaurant. Once she walked out that door, she ceased to be a too-flamboyant figure in his dining room and became a most distinguished personage that had once graced his establishment.
Giovanni was therefore excited—and curious—to see what great personalities might comprise today’s “Wayne Party of four” at 12:30.
Miriam watched impatiently as the customer with green skin browsed a corner set up with Ukrainian Easter eggs, carved boxes and batik paintings. “Can I help you, dear?” she called over. Poison Ivy smiled but shook her head no. She drifted to a table of Wedgwood and Jasperware. Miriam drummed her fingernails on the counter. “You’re quite sure you don’t want any help?” she asked. Poison Ivy shook her head again. “Oh, you’re really too ridiculous,” Miriam said testily, “It’s perfectly obvious you’re here for the magicks, young woman. But I can’t help you if you don’t ask.”
“I— I—”
“So it’s lucky for you that I remember you,” Miriam explained, a friendlier cajoling tone taking over, “Because if I didn’t, you’d be looking at teacups for an hour until you finally bought a picture frame or something equally useless.”
Ivy stared in mute shock. Miriam waited for the woman to find her tongue and state her needs, but when the silence went on too long, she tried again: “Your look is quite memorable, you know. I remember you quite well, from that booth I set up at the Highland Games. You bought… bobile root, I think, and a crystal charm.”
She didn’t really know what Ivy had purchased, but then neither did Ivy. All Miriam really recognized was the startling contrast of red hair and greenish skin.
“I— I—” Ivy began, just as before.
“Come into the back, dear. I just brewed some tea. Green cha, chamomile and catnip. It will do you a world of good.”
Catnip struck a chord. Aching muscles and endless rolls. Postures to loosen her muscles and then more rolls. No, no, no, no, no.
“No,” Ivy blurted. “No thank you, I mean, for the tea. I did want, that is, you were very helpful that day. I had had a very humiliating experience—with a man,” she hastened to add. “A rude insensitive brute of a—”
“Yes, yes, quite,” Miriam nodded with more sympathy than patience. “It happens all the time.”
“Well this is ten times worse,” Ivy wailed, “a hundred times worse, a thousand. There are who knows how many of the lowly scum-dwellers out there getting entirely the wrong idea about me. And it has to stop!&r dquo;
“Oh dear,” Miriam looked very troubled. It sounded like a scorned lover was spreading a vicious rumor, a sadly familiar story. “That’s just the sort of thing I’m here to help with, dear,” Miriam soothed.
She provided her customer with gems, herbs and oils appropriate to her supplication, and she found her a suitable ritual. She showed Ivy where to substitute her own name in the entreaty, and where to state her needs. The total came to $312 and Miriam handed over three discount coupons (“These are good for 15% off your next three purchases”) and a small card divided into ten squares with a tiny moon punched into square one (“Every ten-dollars you get a punch, and when it’s full, that’s another 15% off”). Ivy noted happily that both the coupons and the card were printed on recycled cardstock.
“Do you want a receipt?” Miriam asked, “I don’t like wasting the paper if you’re just going to throw it away once you’re out the door.”
“You are a wonderful person!” Ivy exclaimed, beside herself at this rampant respect for Nature.
Miriam blinked, ‘have a nice day’/parting nod being the more usual way customers dismissed themselves. The woman left, but as she closed the door (a little too firmly, surely), she jostled loose a terra cotta plaque hanging above the door. Janus, Roman god of doorways, fell from his nail and crashed to fragments on the floor.
Miriam rushed over, looked down at the smashed plaque, out the door, down at the plaque, and back out the door. She ran outside, looking in both directions for the green-skinned woman, memories of the Highland Games and wild crowds fleeing from walking trees flooding back into her mind.
“Atropus, Lachesis and Clotho, What have I done?” she murmured. She never associated that one chance customer with the bizarre events of that day. It was just possible she’d sold a potentially destructive magickal device to exactly the wrong person.
The lunch conversation began on a highly literary note. This wouldn’t surprise anyone that knew the facts of the Kents’ visit to Gotham without knowing Clark personally. If one knew only that Clark Kent wrote an exposé on President Luthor, setting off a chain of dominoes that ended in a book deal from Gothamite Publishing, it would have all seemed perfectly natural, a snapshot of Gotham’s power elite: Visiting hotshot/investigative journalist/political pundit and wife having power lunch with billionaire CEO and female companion. But no one who knew Clark’s humble, soft-spoken charm could ever think of him as a power pundit any more than they could dismiss Lois as “and wife.”
It was Giovanni’s famous snobbery that caused the Wayne Party of Four to resemble the Algonquin Roundtable. Lois had been the first to reach his podium at 12:15, having gone shopping while Clark attended his first meeting with the publisher. Giovanni looked her over: She was attractive, although her slim black dress, chic in any other city, was a bit provincial by Gotham standards. But she was more than presentable, not “dressed down” in that horribly déclassé manner favored by certain movie stars, bohemians, and wannabes that fancied themselves ‘artistes’. Giovanni greeted her warmly and led her to the cloakroom to check her bags.
But that brief period of “sizing up” brought out Lois’s work persona. As a journalist, she would assail kings and prime ministers with question after question, heedless of anyone’s power or pretensions. It was her method of coping with the vaguely jud gmental way Giovanni had looked at her. She began questioning him and he, unused to being the focus of such attention, opened up at length. He stationed Lois in the lounge and sat with her, insisting she sample Limoncello, his favorite aperitif. They chatted amicably, although Giovanni had to leave from time to time “just for un momento, Signora, just un momento” to seat other customers as they came in. By the time the rest of the luncheon party arrived, Lois had finished three Limoncellos, but she knew more about d’Annunzio’s than Gothamites who dined there for years.
Once they’d placed their orders, Giovanni made the rounds of the table. He took Selina’s menu from her hand, he took Bruce’s, he took Clark’s, he took Lois’s—and he replaced the last with a much thinker volume: REFLECTIONS by Diana, Princess of Themyscira.
“Look,” Giovanni said proudly, “Like I tell you, one of d’Annunzio’s most famous guests. She sit in that very chair you’re in now.”
“Oops,” Selina winced. “Hadn’t thought of that. Sorry, Lois.”
Lois gave Selina a sideways look… then Bruce. She was beginning not to regret the upcoming chat in re “marital bliss and you.”
“Oh look,” Lois said with mock delight. “It’s an autographed copy.”
Bruce’s eyes became focused and piercing.
“I didn’t know there was a book signing in Gotham,” Clark said casually.
“There wasn’t,” Bruce declared firmly.
“I send to her in Washington,” Giovanni explained happily, “and she signed. Personal message. Very gracious lady.”
Clark breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t want to think about the next League meeting if Diana had trespassed in Batman’s city without his knowledge.
“Very nice,” Lois said politely, handing the book back as if she’d enjoyed the privilege of holding it long enough. “It might interest you to know that my husband, Clark Kent,” she pointed to him playfully, “is also about to be published. Well, he’s been published many times, but this time it’s a book, a collection of his essays from THE GOTHAMITE, The Atlantic and George. Since Clark actually is a writer, I think you’ll find his work—don’t laugh Clark, I see you sniggering over there—find his work far more readable than that of Diana’s ghostwriter, a.k.a. that Australian that thinks she pisses champagne.”
“Lois!” Clark exclaimed, although he’d heard his wife’s rant a number of times. Bruce hid his lip-twitch behind a sip of water, while Selina did nothing to conceal her wide grin.
“Don’t ‘Lois’ me, Smallville. Diana has a ghostwriter and it’s that ridiculous Australian. He left his fingerprints all over it. Choppy sentences, overuse of similes, and apparently lacking any grasp of what a paragraph is or when to break it, he just starts a new one every ten words or so regardless.”
Selina turned to Bruce with a look of absolute delight.
“Oh, I like her. Can we keep her?”
Bruce had set down his water glass and the twitch was now taking refuge behind his thumb as he pretended to scratch his chin.
“Lois,” Clark said firmly, “honestly—and no offense, Selina—Lois, my darling, feathers in your mouth.”
“It’s not catty if it’s true. I didn’t make this up, Clark, she wrote a book about ‘how to be a better person.’ On planet Earth, you spend that much time and e nergy telling other people how they should live their lives, you’re gonna catch some. You hear what I’m sayin’? There will always be the fan club with nothing but fawning admiration. There will always be the opposition, every bit as extreme and determined. And in between, there will always be a vast, vast majority that kind of wish you’d shut up, but don’t really care one way or the other.”
“I check on your appetizers,” Giovanni said hastily.
After such an introduction, the foursome had to seem terribly interested in books for the remainder of the meal. It would have been suspicious if, spending that much time on the literary efforts of a woman they barely knew, they weren’t at least as engrossed in Clark’s own project. It was not in Clark’s nature to boast, but Lois was ready to supply dialogue whenever Giovanni or the waiters came within earshot…
While the appetizers were brought:
“After Clark broke that story about a Luthor-Imperiex connection, Perry put him on a tight leash. The Planet was catching all kinds of hell from the White House spin machine. Perry wasn’t about to fire Clark, but he couldn’t have the paper on the outside looking in for the rest of the Luthor administration.”
While the appetizers were cleared:
“So he started giving Clark these low-profile international stories with no political overtones. Clark liked the work. He’s always had a knack for filing on time against harried deadlines, he could somehow get into places that no other reporter in the world could get near, and he always kept his travel expenses remarkably low.”
And while the main courses were served:
“Anyway, the new assignments were giving him a new perspective on a number of issues, foreign and domestic. He needed an outlet, and the GOTHAMITE said yes. They’ve been publishing his essays for a couple months now, and it must have struck a chord somewhere, because George and The Atlantic were requesting reprint rights and Gothamite Inc. called last week and said they wanted to collect the material in a book. This trip is all about selecting which essays to use, writing a forward, adding some filler…”
While the main course dishes were cleared, there was no continuation on this elevated theme. Instead, Lois was undergoing a kind of transformation—a silent transformation not unconnected to a persistent nudge from under the table. She glanced at her husband for a brief moment… and he glanced back. They appeared to be having an argument silently with their eyes. Finally, Lois rolled her eyes, and sighed, defeated, as many before her had been when faced with the Man of Steel determined to do good. She turned to Bruce and Selina, smiling politely. She lifted her napkin off her lap and lightly dabbed at the corners of her mouth, then stood.
“Please excuse me,” she announced, glancing around the table and stopping at Selina. “Selina, I was about to visit the powder room. Maybe you’d show me the way?”
Selina stared at her curiously for a moment, then glanced over at Clark, who was sitting perfectly upright in his chair with a smile so wide he was almost swallowing his ears. She glanced back to Lois curiously, then dropped her own napkin on the table, rising from her chair.
“Sure…” she answered slowly, a slightly bemused expression creeping onto her face. She motioned in the direction of the restrooms and led Lois away from the table.
Clark watched them intently, tracking their path until he was certain they were out of sight. Bruce tried desperately to control the smirk tugging at his lips as he blithely picked a few crumbs off of the table.
&ldq uo;So,” Bruce said, pulling Clark’s attention back to him. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
Clark studied him closely for an instant, then chuckled. “Was it that obvious?”
Bruce picked up his water glass and raised it to his lips. Just before taking a sip, he muttered behind the rim of the glass, too low for anyone else to hear, but just loud enough that he knew Clark would catch it with his super-hearing.
“That ‘S’ on your chest doesn’t stand for ‘subtle,’ Clark.”
Clark laughed lightly. “All right then, straight to the point. I’m just wondering when you’re going to stop messing around and finally make an ‘honest woman’ out of Selina…”
Bruce froze mid-sip and glared at him over the rim of his glass. He slowly, purposefully, set the glass back down on the table and took a deep breath. Clark noticed that strange twitch tugging at the corner of his friend’s mouth again.
“Define ‘honest,’” Bruce replied dryly.
An oh-please look crossed Clark’s face. “You know what I mean, Bruce. When are the two of you going to finally settle down?”
Bruce leaned back in his chair, the lip twitch getting more erratic. “Clark, in all the years that you’ve known me, have you ever seen me settle for anything?”
Clark shot him a disgusted look. He knew that Bruce would keep playing with semantics unless he came right out and said it. “Have you guys even talked about the possibility of getting married?”
There it was—finally out in the open. The two men stared at each other across the table, neither one moving. A waiter came over and quietly removed the plates from the table as another came in behind him and set down several dishes of palate-cleansing sorbet. Both experienced employees of D’Annunzio’s, neither waiter made any outward indication that these two men staring each other down in complete silence was in any way out of the ordinary. Just before they turned to leave, Bruce broke away from the gaze and thanked them both politely, then picked up his spoon and scooped out a small bit of his sorbet.
“I see,” Bruce replied flatly before sampling the lightly fruity, frozen delicacy. He twirled the spoon slowly around in his fingers, lightly gesturing with it as he spoke in even, matter-of-fact tones. “So, you’ve had this conversation with Wally. You’ve had this conversation with Kyle. It’s not that far of a stretch to imagine that you’ve had similar conversations with Diana and with Arthur as well. So, it’s my turn now, is that it?”
“You two are perfect for each other, Bruce. We can all see that. Why not make that official—”
“Look, Clark,” he interrupted. “I know that ever since the announcement of Dick and Barbara’s engagement, you’ve had these wedding bells chiming in your ears, but you’ve got to stop trying to play matchmaker for the rest of the group. Your heart’s in the right place, but the private lives… especially the private love lives of the rest of the crew are, quite frankly, none of your damn business. So it’s time to put the Yenta back in the box now. Eat your sorbet.”
Clark was taken aback by the bluntness of the words. He stared blankly at Bruce for a few moments, then finally spoke softly. “With all of the things that we see on a daily basis… the hatred, the anger, the madness and the violence… I worry about all of us, Bruce. It’s important for each of us to have something to counterbalance that. I just want to be sure that all of you… that all of us… have some level of stability in our lives. Some amount of… happiness.”
Bruce considered the words solemnly as he finished the last bite of his sorbet. He set the spoon down and glanced across the table at his friend, a warm, genuine smile appearing on his face.
“I am happy, Clark. Happier than I’ve been since… since I can remember. And that has nothing to do with any ring or certificate.” He wiped his mouth with his napkin, then stared pointedly into his friend’s eyes. “Stick with the grand scale world-saving, Clark. Leave the personal stuff to the rest of us.”
Clark let out a single, breathy chuckle and nodded slowly. “Will do,” he replied lightly as he picked up his own spoon and began eating his sorbet.
“By the way,” Bruce said, leaning back in his chair again, the twitch-smile returning. “Sending your wife to have the conversation I’m betting she’s having with Selina in the bathroom right now? Not your brightest move.”
I couldn’t figure it out. I’d never seen a transformation like it outside of a Fop covering a secret identity: the woman who was a dynamo at the lunch table had somehow downshifted into a stammering nincompoop.
It began with: “So, um, things with Bruce going okay?”
“Fine,” I said. And I started putting on lipstick, because I’ve never been big on ‘girl talk’ and every woman knows you can’t say too much that way without smudging.
“Good, good,” she went on. Now please remember, this is a professional writer talking who disemboweled some fledgling Faulkner not an hour earlier. Her next words I quote verbatim: “Good is good. ‘Cuz y’know Clark has been, I mean we’ve both been… not to mention… it’s just… well… you two look so good together.”
I got it.
I let her twist in the breeze for a bit while I became very engrossed in my eyeshadow. My silence led her to such astonishing feats of verbal lunacy as “And good together is so much better than good apart because even if you have good without anybody else, it’s fine to be independent and all, but alone is really no fun, and the apart kind of good can always get better if there is someone else to—”
“Stop.” I snapped my compact shut on the word and dropped it into my purse. “Clark put you up to this, didn’t he?”
She looked panicked for a moment, glancing at the door like I might blow or lunge at her or something. Then she sort of deflated, and then she was Lois again.
“Yes, of course he did,” she announced. “You think I give a shit if you two get married or not.”
What I find most troubling about the whole episode is the fact that the married state can apparently cause perfectly sane and capable women to go along with conversations like this one because HE thinks it’s a good idea. The possibilities with regard to Bruce are nothing short of horrifying:
Oh Pammy, would you come along to the powder room with me, please?
Selina, you’ve been the Iceberg 600 times. Why can’t you—
JUST COME TO THE TOILET, IVY, AND LEAVE THE WEED AT THE TABLE!
Meanwhile, Lois had become fascinated by her nail polish.
“Look,” I said finally, remembering our first meeting, way back when at LexCorp. “You obviously need some leverage handling the hubby, and I need to get back out there before Bruce says ‘just coffee’ and I miss out on empress peaches stuffed with amaretto cream on a pomegranate reduction drizzled in Belgian chocolate. So let’s pretend you had your say, I shot you down, and we agreed to sett le it with shoe shopping like any sane, rational women with a free afternoon on Fifth Avenue.”
While Poison Ivy found her lair in Riverside Park to be cozier and more secluded than the one in Robinson Park, she chose the latter for the ritual.
Miriam had stressed that the summoning could not create power, it would merely draw it forth from elements where it already dwelled. Since Ivy was not an experienced practitioner in the Craft, Miriam had been skeptical of her ability to focus her will to draw forth the dormant powers. Ivy scoffed at this, since Miriam—while undoubtedly an excellent witch—could not possibly understand her special connection with nature. The very notion that she, as a goddess of all things green, needed any great feat of concentration to bond with plant life! But she would hedge her bets all the same. Robinson Park was far larger than Riverside, and therefore had more greenery for her to draw on.
She found a clearing of sufficient size, where no grass would be sacrificed, and drew a circle in the soil, as instructed. She placed one of the gems marked with symbols along the precise point in the arc to the north, another to the south… east… and west. Placing the last one, she noticed for the first time a statue of Janus where the main path forked off to the ice-skating rink. She made a wry face. She had no particular objection to Janus as the Roman god of gates, doors, beginnings, endings and doorways. She wouldn’t have cared, had she known, that he was also Bifrons, an Earl of Hell with six legions of demons at his command. What she objected to was his appearance. He had two faces, one pointing in each direction.
Poison Ivy was not at all keen to conduct her ritual with some two-face staring at her, even if this one was 1) a statue and 2) a god. He was 3) a man and 4) a two-face. So 5) she could find a new clearing…
Except that it would take some doing to find another clearing this large. She couldn’t kill grass for the sake of her ritual! And she wanted to act now, while the sun was high and the plants were most energized. She would simply have to ignore him. Ignoring a two-face that pushed himself forward in an inconvenient place where he wasn’t wanted would be no problem whatsoever.
So she composed herself, moved to the center of the circle, and began her appeal:
To the focus of my spirit?the nexus of my thought?I summon all the power?On earth or hades wrought?To right the wrong done the goddess?To right the wrong done the goddess’s name?My mentation is thy avatar?Thy transcendenceis, my claim.
The Viking Sagas tell of a Time before Time, when gods and giants fought for dominion. The gods won, but prophecy decreed the two sides would fight again in a cataclysmic war that would mean the end of all: Ragnarok.
To prepare for this great battle, each side assembled an army from the fallen warriors of the earth. Half of those killed in battle, the Valkrye took to Valhalla, Odin’s great hall, where they feasted on mead and boar’s meat, waited on by the Valkrye themselves, until the day came when they would fight for the gods at Ragnarok.
The remaining dead went to the underworld, dominion of Hel, the daughter of Loki. Hel guarded her army for the giants, but although their numbers were equal to the army of the gods, they could not match the terrible fierceness of Odin’s warriors…
By the time Selina and Lois made it back to the table, they were laughing and joking like long-time friends. Once the initial tension had broken, they laughed about it, the absolute ridiculousness of Clark’s “plan.” They ha d waited in the bathroom a few extra minutes—to “give Bruce time for a full-scale flogging,” Lois explained—before returning to the table.
As they approached, Lois noted the browbeaten look on her husband’s face with a small amount of satisfaction. From the look of concern he shot at her, she guessed Bruce had time to not only berate Clark’s own initiative but to address “sending Lois into the Kitty’s den” as well. Lois smiled sweetly at her husband’s confused stare—he obviously hadn’t expected her to return in one piece, much less laughing and joking.
The men stood politely as the ladies arrived and sat. Once back in their seats, both women’s demeanor abruptly changed and they each affixed Clark with an icy stare. Clark’s confusion turned quickly to concern, bordering on blind panic under the weight of the dual blast. Bruce hid the twitch-smile behind a sip of water.
Just as he was starting to question his own safety, Clark—who many considered to be the mightiest hero on the planet—was ‘rescued’ by a bright Italian voice.
“Now that the ladies have returned, it is time for dessert, no?” Giovanni asked as he materialized next to the table.
“Yes!” Clark chirped a little too eagerly.
Giovanni rambled off a list of desserts, each one seemingly more exquisite than the last. Knowing Miss Kyle’s particular fondness for their confectionery delights, Giovanni focused his attention squarely on her as he proudly announced d’Annunzio’s newest addition to the after-meal selection: a chocolate soufflé, filled with a Godiva chocolate/Grand Marnier mousse, served on fudge-raspberry reduction and sprinkled with fresh raspberries.
Selina and Lois both agreed on the soufflé. Bruce got his “just coffee.” Clark got apple pie. Actually, what he got was the “spiced apple-cinnamon tartlet with honey-cream sauce,” but it sounded close enough to “apple pie” for him.
Conversation before the desserts arrived was decidedly lighter, liberally peppered with barbs in Clark’s direction (“some people do think the whole world lives like TV sitcom families”) from both Lois and Selina. When the desserts arrived, Giovanni hovered politely around the table, waiting for appropriate—and quotable—responses to the new dessert. The ladies did not disappoint.
“Oh meow,” Selina breathed, closing her eyes dreamily, “It tingles… all the way down.”
“My god…” Lois moaned, placing a hand on Clark’s forearm. “Sorry, Honey, but I think you just dropped down a notch on my Favorite Things list…”
Clark stared at her in surprise, listening to the sounds she was emitting—sounds he’d never heard outside of the Kent bedroom. He coughed lightly and took a bite of his tartlet.
Satisfied with the positive responses, Giovanni thanked them all graciously and headed back to the kitchen to inform Roberto, the head Pastry Chef, that he had indeed crafted another Kyle-approved masterpiece.
“You know, Clark,” Selina quipped, “if she has any more of that, you could be…” She stopped suddenly as she realized he was no longer paying attention to her. His eyes had gone distant, glassy. His ears suddenly twitched… no, not twitched—perked. It was a surprisingly feline move from such an obvious dog-person. She stared at him strangely for a moment, then turned to Bruce to see if he knew what was happening… but Bruce had already done that shift-in-density thing. Selina instantly realized what was happening—they were both going into “work mode.”
Noticing the sudden shift in the atmosphere at the table, Lois glanced u p from her dessert and saw an all-too-familiar look on her husband’s face. He heard something—something nasty in the area that might require his attention. She glanced over to Bruce and was shocked at the incredible change in his demeanor. She knew that she was no longer looking at Bruce Wayne, Playboy Fop, but instead she was looking at Batman wrapped in a Bruce Wayne suit.
Miriam had lost sight of the mysterious green-skinned woman, but after the first moment of panic had passed, she realized that wouldn’t matter in the long run. If the Janus plaque was a warning, then the green woman would reveal her location soon enough. Anyone attuned to the astral plane would feel it if the lines of magick shifted from their normal patterns, and Miriam had always been sensitive to the location of such disturbances.
As it turned out, she needed no special sensitivity. All of Gotham could see the funnel of black clouds forming over the west half of Robinson Park.
Ivy had closed her eyes, repeating the chant as instructed, focusing all her will on those crucial words: To right the wrong done the goddess… To right the wrong done the goddess’s name…
She had become so focused on her incantations that she failed to notice the growing chill. The warmth of sunlight, so important to her plant-like serenity, had vanished from her skin. And the air was turning dank and sour. Ivy closed her eyes tighter and concentrated harder, blocking out the encroaching distractions… Right the wrong done the goddess… Right the wrong done the goddess… Right the wrong done the… oohulgh…
Her insides seized with a wave of nausea that broke all focus and her eyes popped open.
“Uh oh,” she breathed, seeing herself surrounded by a thick smoky fog.
Ivy screamed as a lightning bolt struck the center of her circle mere inches from her feet, knocking her back—the fog solidified above this point—solidified blacker and grimier and smellier—a disgusting stench of sulfur no plant could abide—but also into a shape—the shape of a disembodied head with two faces—the shape of the bust of Janus.
“Thank you, Green One, for your pains. Too long have I been absent from this mortal realm.”
Ivy recovered from the shock enough to regard the… whatever it was… with a wry expression.
“You’re—”
“SILENCE!” the thing bellowed, “I gave you not leave to address me, mortal! Your summoning, unasked but welcome, brings power to mine fingers fit to tear the veil between worlds! For that, I give you leave to speak.”
“Now look, Bub,” Ivy poked the fog belligerently at it’s thickest point, “You’re not exactly what I ordered but you’re here to—” she found it impossible to continue as a hurricane wind swept through the park. The fog remained completely still, but leaves, twigs and dirt flew through the air, and trees bent low. Ivy found it difficult to breathe in the face of such gusts and impossible to speak.
“I am here to right the wrong done the goddess. Hel, my fair one, goddess of the Underworld, is wronged as any deity of any pantheon.”
These last words were punctuated by a fresh burst of lightning and shrill crash of thunder.
Clark’s eyes refocused and locked onto Bruce’s. There was a strange, intense moment of silence between the two of them. When they finally spoke, it was in low, discreet whispers—too low to possibly be heard outside of the table.
“Where?” Bruce a sked.
Clark’s ear perked again. “About a mile, a mile and a half, north-northwest.”
Bruce thought for a moment, picturing the grid-lined map of Gotham he kept locked in his brain. His brow knotted lightly as he tried to place the location. “Dogs?”
To anyone else, it would have seemed an odd question, but Clark knew to trust the man’s instincts. He listened again, trying to pick out particular sounds amongst the chaos. “Yes, quite a few.”
Bruce nodded slowly. “Robinson Park,” he growled. His right arm flinched suddenly as searing pain sliced across his biceps. Already in “Bat Mode,” he ignored the pain for the time being, instead focusing his attention squarely on Clark. He knew that look on Clark’s face—he knew that what he was hearing wasn’t just a single person in trouble—this was something big.
Selina noticed the flinch and eyed him curiously. It seemed an odd reaction from him… then she noticed the vein throbbing in his neck—it was an intensity she’d never seen outside of the cave.
Clark hadn’t noticed Bruce’s flinch; he was too intent on focusing on the noises. Aside from the obvious panicked screams and barking dogs, there was something else… a lot of something else…
The two men traded intense glances again, both reaching the same conclusion. Lunch was about to be cut short. Bruce picked up his napkin and wiped the corners of his mouth, then dropped it onto the table, discretely pressing a small button on his watch in the same motion.
“Sorry, ladies,” Clark apologized as they both stood. Selina marveled at how quickly Clark had shifted back into the bright, happy reporter. “We have to step out for a bit…”
Clark leaned down and kissed his wife’s cheek, not wanting to interrupt her obvious enjoyment of the culinary delight. Selina stood with them, her attention focused squarely on Bruce. She stepped in between Bruce and the path to the door, regarding him with a concerned look. She knew there was something wrong with him but…
He stepped forward and kissed her gently. It was oddly natural, comfortable—especially considering he was obviously still in his focused Bat Mode. Her hand slid up inside his sport coat, gently caressing his side. When he pulled away, confusion mixed with the concern on her face. What had gotten into him?
“I’ll be fine,” he assured her with a low growl.
“I didn’t ask, Stud,” she replied, practically on instinct. He felt his lip twitch slightly in spite of himself. Bruce stepped around her and he and Clark strolled purposefully toward the exit as Selina returned to her seat.
As they neared the front door, Bruce rubbed his upper arm where the strange pain had struck. The pain was gone—vanishing as quickly as it had appeared—but now his arm felt strange. His skin felt… tight and it itched lightly. He’d check on it when he changed into the suit.
Bruce suddenly lurched to the left and careened into Clark as a sharp, stabbing pain shot through his left thigh, just above the knee. The pain was excruciating; it felt like something tearing through his leg from front to back, taking skin, muscle tissue and blood with it. It felt like a bullet wound.
Clark was able to grab him quickly and help get him back upright. He glanced in surprise and confusion that the normally sure-footed Bruce had somehow just inexplicably lost his balance. There was the briefest flash of pain across Bruce’s face, then he straightened himself and continued toward the door, ignoring the curious stares of the patrons around them.
“Sorry,” Bruce muttered, almost incoherently as they stepped out into the daylight. Clark was about to ask his f riend what was going on when they both noticed the dark, menacing clouds moving quickly across the sky, swirling and coalescing around a central point about a mile away.
Finding the source of the catastrophe would be easier than they expected.
Clark moved as if he was about to take off then and there, then stopped and turned to look at Bruce.
“You need me to zip you to the manor or something?” Clark asked quietly as they stared up at the sky.
“No need,” Bruce replied, as a large, black Rolls Royce pulled up in front of the restaurant. Bruce knew Alfred was waiting a few blocks away and would have come as soon as he received the signal from Bruce’s watch, but even so the timing was impeccable. Bruce stepped up to the rear door of the car and opened it, motioning for Clark to get in.
As soon as they were in, Bruce called up to Alfred in the front seat. “Two blocks, then turn right into the alleyway behind the old Holcom Theater.” During the short trip to the alley, Clark’s eyes never left the window and the ominous clouds forming overhead.
Once they were safely parked behind the theater, Bruce opened a hidden compartment under the back seat and pulled out a spare Batsuit. He heard Clark’s door open and glanced up to see Cla— no, Superman, already changed into his costume, standing beside the open door, and glancing up toward the blackened sky.
Superman leaned his head back in the door. “Do you need…?”
“Go!” Bruce cut him off. “I’ll catch up.”
Superman nodded once and was gone, streaking up out of the alley.
Bruce quickly began to change into his costume. He glanced over at his bare arm and noticed… a scar?! Right where the pain had sliced across his biceps was a perfectly formed, thin scar. He shook his head lightly and continued suiting up.
“Once I’m gone, head back to the restaurant and wait for Selina and Lois,” he instructed Alfred. The butler glanced up into the rearview mirror and nodded.
Suddenly, Bruce rocked violently back against the seat, his arms splaying out wide. A huge gash suddenly opened across his abdomen like he was being gutted by a giant invisible knife. He clenched his teeth, growling against the pain. Alfred spun around in his seat to see what was happening. They both watched in horror as the wound across Bruce’s stomach started to close back in on itself, the skin bunching up and closing the hole… leaving a perfectly formed scar.
Bruce let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, panting lightly as he stared down at the scar. This was it—payback. Nature was collecting its debt, balancing out the healing he had received from the magic rune. And he knew that somewhere, Mother Nature was laughing.
“What on Earth?!” Alfred gasped from the front seat, staring at the freshly formed scar.
“Magic,” Batman spat in disgust.
Tim would have liked to check in with Alfred before he went into the Batcave. He would have liked to double check that it was empty. He would have liked absolute confirmation that Bruce and Selina were out for the day… But since he was technically cutting class, he knew he would have to risk it. Talking to Alfred would just stir up all kinds of questions, and all he really needed was to pick up the books he’d left behind.
He heard a strange sound as he ducked in through the Batmobile entrance. At first, he thought it was some kind of generator hum. It wouldn’t be the first weird echo that popped up when Bruce installed something in the wrong place, then disappeared again when he moved it. So Tim wasn’t surprised that it got louder as he approached the main chamber—he did notice it was getting higher and squeakier—then he forgot about the noise completely when all the bats flew at him.
“Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap,” he blurted, shielding his eyes with one arm and waving screeching black blurs away from his head with the other. He worked his way through the cyclone of bats—which he finally realized were not coming at him directly but were freaking out every which way.
He finally reached the main chamber, curious what could have happened to upset all the bats, but happy that at least he wasn’t being personally attacked—when something small, gray, and fierce flew at his face, clamped onto his throat and hissed an awful spray of fetid stench into his nostrils. Tim struggled to pull tiny but strong claws out of his neck.
“JOWLS!” he gulped, when he saw what it was.
The thing cackled another awful spray of stink at him and hopped away like a monkey. It raced around the cave, swiping at a wounded bat as it went, and settling finally back on the workstation where Tim had left him. He picked up a batarang and pounded it fiercely into the desk, then took off for the costume vault. Tim chased after it—only to be forced back by a stab of white pain slicing through his arm.
“AAAAAAAARGH!” Tim screamed as he fell backwards.
He looked at the arm and saw a Bat-grapnel sticking out. He didn’t have time to register the thought when Jowls was on top of him again, growling and hissing with that stinking breath, and pounding at him with some kind of club.
Not a club, Tim realized vaguely, a grapnel launcher.
Back at the restaurant, both women had returned to their desserts, each eating silently. It occurred to Lois first that they were quiet for the same reason, preoccupied by the same thoughts.
“Sometimes I hate it, you know,” she said without preamble. “I’ve never told anyone that. I hate it sometimes, having to share him with the rest of the world.”
Selina looked up but said nothing at first. She was somewhat shocked at the naked honesty of the statement—and at its coming from a woman she barely knew. Then the full weight of the situation hit her. What was said in the powder room was so much piffle, and Selina had dismissed it as such. But this was the reality: Superman’s wife opening up to her candidly as the only other woman who might understand. It was just there, sitting on the table between them like so much chocolate soufflé, automatic mutual acknowledgement that they were… in the same boat.
“The sudden exits,” Selina began hesitantly, like one speaking a foreign language, one learned from books but never spoken out loud.
“Oh, those you get used to,” Lois chimed in with a quickness Selina found alarming. “Well, not completely, but it gets easier over time.”
“No,” she insisted. “Maybe you get used to it; I don’t. Every time it happens, I get whiffs of ‘the bimbos’. It’s what he did to all those women over the years that were just… fop cover.”
Lois raised an eyebrow and Selina realized the associations she’d been making were unfair. If a boy scout like Superman did it to his own wife…
“Look,” Lois said, finishing her last bite of soufflé, “You get to that point where you realize that no matter how capable you are at taking care of yourself, there’s always that issue of him wanting to protect you if you’re there. No matter what we do, they have to have that sense of security that you’re safe… and you realize t hat it’s best to just let him go and do his thing.”
Selina felt the blood draining from her face. It was a cage, that’s what Lois was describing; it was the cage Selina had been terrified of stepping into since… since…
Xanadu. When they got back from that weekend at Xanadu, the weekend she’d left with Batman and come back with Bruce Wayne. Her head was reeling the whole flight back. Instead of parting where they’d met up at the little executive airstrip near Bristol, he’d turned to her with that dangerously handsome unmasked face and said “Why not come out to the house?” Just like that. Come out to the house, like it wasn’t the richest mansion in the country, like it was simply his home. She agreed, and then she met Alfred, and then Bruce showed her around the manor. Then he opened the cabinet of the grandfather clock and set the hands to 10:47, revealing the passage to the cave. He’d held out his hand… She took it without a word and followed… And somewhere in that one moment, underneath the wonder of seeing the Batcave, beneath the thrill discovering the man, inside the euphoria of being in love, that terror was born: the cage. Lured inside by such tempting bait: He was bringing her—she was walking into—his most private sanctuary. He was bringing her to his most special place… “They have to have that sense of security that you’re safe” …and the door slams shut behind you. “They have to have that sense of security…” that you’re safe? or that you’re theirs. That you’re owned.
“That’s just what I was afraid of,” Lois said crisply. Selina shook herself back to the present and looked across the table. Lois was looking at a small leather portfolio set between them with the word d’Annunzio’s embossed in gold leaf. “They stuck us with the check,” she announced.
Selina smiled knowingly—she and Lois were not quite that alike after all. She reached into her lap and produced Bruce’s wallet like a conjurer’s trick.
Goddesses do not panic. They may not enjoy having hellish smoke-beings appear in their midst, invulnerable to their plant-minions, oblivious to their pheromones, and choking off all life-giving sunlight…
They may be driven half-mad by the screams if the trees they’re so connected to are stripped of their leaves by gale-force winds… if the shrubbery is ripped from their soil by sharp gusts wreaking of hellfire… if all the flowers and grass withering for lack of sun and air wail with one voice as a great mass of dying nature…
They may even run, blinded though they are by the fog and chaos, to get away, anywhere away, from the shrieking, darkness, evil, churning madly, everywhere, deadly to flowers, deadly to grass, deadly to trees… running madly, screaming like the dying flowers, wailing like the dying grass, shrieking like the dying trees until they find themselves cowering, cold, tight and tighter, and screaming still under something, anything, large and strong enough, for protection, and quiet, anything to get away from the awful clamoring of all that dying green!
But they do not panic.
Batman landed roughly on the roof of the Gotham Banking & Trust building, ducking into a roll to slow his inertia. Not the most graceful of landings, but considering that halfway through his swing his left arm had suddenly broken—causing him to jerk erratically and change trajectory—forcing him to overcorrect and overshoot the edge of the roof by a good six feet—leading to this awkward landing…
As soon as he stood, he felt his left humerus snapping back into place, resetting itself, and his whole upper arm throbbed. The scars and wounds were still returning, the time in between each re-appearance getting shorter and shorter as he got closer and closer to Robinson Park. Wounds that originally took months to heal were resurfacing and re-healing themselves in a matter of seconds. It was a… bizarre sensation.
He grunted away the pain, forcing himself to continue on. That was one of the strange things he’d long ago discovered about wearing the suit—just being wrapped in the cape and cowl seemed to boost his tolerance for pain… though today was certainly testing that theory.
He knew he shouldn’t be out in the field like this. Batman’s effectiveness as a fighter came from his ability to control and trust his body—something that he couldn’t guarantee considering what was happening. But he also knew that Superman was out there, battling whatever magical evil had been unleashed upon Gotham, and Batman would be damned if he was going to let his friend stand alone. Especially considering Clark’s susceptibility to magical damage…
Batman grunted in determination as he reloaded the grapnel launcher. From here, it was an easy path to the park—swing from the gargoyle on the corner of Grupnel Tower’s roof, around the Parkside Apartments and over the Eastern Gate of the park.
He pointed the grapnel launcher toward Grupnel Tower… and froze.
The gargoyle was gone.
The fiercest of the Viking warriors were the Berserkers. The Berserkers were no ordinary fighters. They became possessed of a savage rage, unable to distinguish friend from foe and blind to everything but their own mad fury. In the throes of “the berserk”, they became enormously strong and were magically immune to harm from any weapons.
By the time Superman arrived, Robinson Park was completely encased in a thick black fog. It clung to the sides as well as the top, giving the impression of an ebon brick. The yells Superman heard were all coming from inside it. So he blew three short, precise puffs of superbreath, hoping to clear it and alleviate the fears of those trapped within… But the fog did not disperse. It didn’t even move.
Superman flew to the east and blew again, testing the new angle. He flew to the north and blew yet again, harder. Still the solid mass of fog remained untouched. He focused his X-ray vision on it—and was so shocked by the result he “stumbled” momentarily in his hover. He couldn’t see through it. The “fog” was impenetrable to his vision… unaffected by his breath…
In his mind’s ear, he heard Batman’s voice when they had encountered similar phenomena in the League. He heard the voice, deeper than usual with contemptuous disgust, uttering a single word: Magic.
Superman was vulnerable to magic—and magical beings were often, like this fog, not vulnerable to him. He didn’t let that deter him, but flew determinedly into the dark miasma where the yells and cries were most intense.
Unlike human eyes, Superman’s vision needed no time to adjust to the darkness within the sooty cloud cover, but his mind did need those same seconds to process what his eyes were showing him. The people weren’t panicking; they were attacking each other. Dogwalkers were wielding their leashes like whips and garrotes, softball players swung their bats like clubs, and crew teams rammed with their oars. A mounted policeman rode through, slashing and pounding to the left and right with his billyclub. Superman charged to intercept him before he crushed the skull of a jogger fighting off the dogwalkers—
Superman was horrified when, lifting horse and man as one, he heard the sickening crack of contact between the heavy club and the jogger’s head. He turned mid-flight to see the damage, only to see instead the jogger—unharmed—cutting down the dogwalkers with his bare hands. The jogger charged in his direction, howling with inhuman rage at the policeman and horse Superman still held above his head. Superman hadn’t recovered from the shock when the jogger leapt—leapt! 12 feet at least!—and punched him in the jaw. Superman was thrown—actually thrown back—with the weight of the blow. He lost his grasp on his load, sending it plummeting into the park in a chaotic mass of man and horseflesh.
The policeman—who should have been crushed by the fall, threw the horse off of him like—like it was nothing—and within seconds the jogger and policeman were locked together, hands fastened on each other’s throats.
Despite the chaos, Superman heard one voice emerge distinctly from the pandemonium: “Superman. Southeast corner. Now.”
He was reluctant to leave the policeman and jogger—or any of these people—lest they hurt themselves. But they didn’t seem to be hurting each other (despite their best efforts). And he didn’t seem able to stop them anyway (despite his). It was better to heed Batman’s summons and see if he knew what was happening.
There are two kinds of women in the world: those who savor, and those who don’t. The ones who savor know how to enjoy a good time when it happens. We dig in the claws and ride a rush as hard and as long as we can.
If, for example, one was having an especially good night, getting into the Crenel penthouse in record time, getting into the safe in record time, and discovering that the old boy not only had the bearer bonds she expected, but that he also had a diamond bracelet all ready to give his mistress… Well, it’s only natural to keep a good thing going. To prowl a bit instead of going straight home—to prowl near the Moxton Building or Wayne Towers—his favorite haunts, hoping for a little scrap and scratch.
It only makes sense to women like me to feed the high.
And then there are those other gals. I don’t know if they feel guilty about having fun or if they take themselves too seriously—or maybe they’re just afraid they’ll get their hair mussed if they throw their head back and have a good time. Whatever it is, they’ll push back from the table at d’Annunzio’s, still flushed from some masterpiece of chocolate-raspberry bliss, and their first words uttered will involve “walking it off.”
Lois, to her credit, did not say “walk it off” after Giovanni’s magnificent soufflé. Instead, her eyes glanced at Bruce’s credit card, and then looked up at me. There was a curious glint in her eye, one I associate with phrases like ‘Riddle me this’ and ‘Let’s flip for it.’ One I associate with prowling on a good night, hoping to keep the thrill going with a little bat-action.
“Let’s go shopping,” she said.
No instant-penance for the joys of the soufflé. On the contrary, while we’re still glowing, let’s feed the high. Let’s take the billionaire’s black AmEx and try on the new Escadas. “Let’s go shopping,” Lois said, and it’s just possible, in that one moment, every salesclerk at Saks had simultaneous orgasms.
We’ll never know for sure, because as soon as Lois and I stepped out the door of the restaurant, we saw the dark patch over Robinson Park.
“Guess we know where they went,” I remarked. I wasn’t bitter, but I was still smarting. I’d been left behind with the civilian and that was bad enough. And then the civilian had said it was because he needed it to be that way. I didn’t want to believe it; I still don’t. Bruce isn’t like that. He knows I don’t need to be protected like some weakling Girl Friday.
“C’mon,” Lois called, charging up the street towards the park. “Whatever that thing is, it’s news.”
“Um, hello!” I said, sprinting after her. “What happened to ‘they need to know you’re safe/best to let them do their thing’?”
“Not to the point where I don’t do my job,” Lois announced crisply, “Rushing to wherever he’s needed, that’s his job. Going after the story is mine. And that thing up there is a headline. Let’s go bag it.”
Definite echoes of “Riddle me this”… Definitely.
In the years since I’d become Catwoman, I thought I’d done it all in terms of Gotham extracurricular activities. But as Lois Lane led me towards Robinson Park with the same determined gait I’d once led her through my escape route from LexCorp, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this would be a new one: I was heading, at full speed, into my first Lucy sketch.
Superman streaked through the park toward the southeast corner. He flew a good twenty feet off the ground, trying to stay above the building chaos, but that didn’t stop several of the raging humans from attempting to leap at him. He managed to successfully dodge one especially persistent leaper who followed him for several hundred feet before crashing into a hotdog cart and immediately getting into a scuffle with the cart owner. Again, he felt that twinge of remorse as he looked down at the combatants. It seemed to go against everything he stood for to just let these two crazed people pound and claw at each other. But it still seemed that no physical damage was being dealt and he’d heard that tone in Batman’s voice. Superman took a deep breath, then continued on toward Batman’s location.
He landed in time to see Batman locked in a battle with a rampaging jogger. Just as he was about to intervene, he saw Batman’s hand shoot forward and a small cloud of green smoke enveloped the jogger’s head. The jogger flailed madly for several seconds, swiping at the cloud surrounding his head in rage, then dropped to the ground, unconscious.
“Neuro-toxin,” Batman explained, his eyes scanning the immediate area for any more approaching attackers. Superman noticed the green lenses covering Batman’s eyelets—obviously allowing him to see through the dense fog.
“Although they appear to be impervious to physical attacks,” Batman continued, focusing his attention on the downed jogger, “it looks like some things are still effective.” He held up a small green capsule. “This is the gas I use against Killer Croc. A man this size should have dropped instantly.”
“What is this? What’s going on?” Superman asked as he knelt down on the other side of the body that Batman was examining. He hoped that Batman had some kind of explanation for this bizarre set of circumstances.
“Working on it,” was his only reply. Batman quickly and methodically searched the body, looking for clues. Superman scanned as well, literally scanning him from the inside out.
“Batman, do you see that?” he asked, pointing to the man’s forehead. Batman focused on th e area that the Man of Steel was pointing to, but saw nothing. He shook his head and Superman focused again, shifting his eyes through various light spectra.
“Infrared spectrum.” It sounded more like a question.
“Lenses. Infrared.” Batman barked lowly, and the lenses flicked lightly.
“What is that?” Superman asked once he realized that Batman could now see what he had. “It looks like… a rune?”
“Yes.”
“Celtic?”
“Nordic.”
Batman traced a gloved finger over the strange symbol glowing in the unconscious man’s forehead. He recognized the rune—he’d seen it twice in the last 72 hours. Most recently, he’d seen it when reading through the book on Norse Mythology in his library. But before that, he’d seen it on the magic runestone he’d held just three nights before. It was the same magic or, at least, the same kind of magic that had turned him into a rampaging beast…
“Berserkers,” Batman growled. They both stood, their eyes still locked on the unconscious jogger. “Someone—or something—is turning these people into berserkers. Did you see anything…?”
“Only the crazed people,” Superman interrupted. “The berserkers.”
“We need to find the source. It has to be somewhere here in the par…”
Batman stopped as a scream suddenly pierced the fog. It was no howl of rage or roar of insanity, it was a shriek of the purest terror—a sound both heroes were all too familiar with.
They both started scanning the area quickly. The dense fog made it almost impossible to tell where the terrified scream was coming from. But they both knew what that scream meant: there was someone else in the park who wasn’t affected, who hadn’t been turned into a crazed warrior… and they were in trouble.
Batman suddenly looked back to Superman, his jaw tightening. He pulled a handful of small capsules out of his belt and handed them to Superman—more neuro-toxin. It might not help against the big bad—whatever it was—but he could at least keep the berserkers from getting in the way.
“Go!” Batman instructed. “Find the center of this mess. Find what’s doing this and stop it! I’ll take care of the bystanders…”
He hadn’t even gotten the last word out of his mouth and Superman was gone, streaking off the way he had come.
Once he’d gotten over the shock, Tim found he had no trouble subduing the fierce little gargoyle. Holding onto it was another matter. Built to fit on top of a computer screen, the thing was about the size of a large bullfrog—too small for Batcuffs, and too squirmy to tie up with Batline.
Every time Tim managed to grab onto the little menace, it bit him. The only way he could hold it at all, he discovered, was with one hand clutched around the throat and one grasping the head, pulling it back firmly so it couldn’t lunge and snap. That left the little monster’s legs free to claw up Tim’s wrist and forearm. Four times Tim managed to capture it this way, and four times it tore into his wrist until it broke free. Now it was loose in the cave again and he had no idea where, although he heard the occasional clank of Batarang against rock.
Tim abandoned his pursuit long enough to slip into the costume vault and change into Robin—the costume wouldn’t give him complete protection, but it was a vast improvement over his school clothes. He headed back into the main chamber, cautiously scanning above and to the sides… scanning… scanning… until at last, he saw it&hellip ; lurking up there in the truss supporting a storage platform… It was in the same position, haunched over its front claws, as it had been as a desktop statue. It didn’t look nearly so cute now.
Robin eyed his adversary with the focused intensity of a rooftop combatant. The little beast wasn’t exactly threatening now that the element of surprise was spent: It couldn’t conceal itself well, its hostile intensions were clear, and its attacks were obvious and ineffective.
“Okay Jowls,” Robin announced, making an elaborate show readying a Batarang. If he was right, the gargoyle was fierce but stupid, and would react predictably to a taunt. “Playtime’s over. This ends. Now.”
When the reaction came, Robin took a step backward, his mouth dropped open in surprise. No rogue, street thug, or henchman had ever been quite this stupid: the gargoyle, thinking itself cunning, had stood and walked along its perch until it could conceal itself behind some truss. As soon as it imagined itself hidden, it turned in Robin’s direction. Robin could see its eyes clearly, glowing in the shadows, trained on him as it moved. Jowls walked in this way to the end of the support, then turned and paced back the way it came—still eyeing Robin with those obvious glowing eyes—until it reached the end of the “cover” of truss beams. It kept walking from there but with eyes forward, as if casually and unaware of Robin’s presence… until it reached the other end of the perch. Then it turned again and walked back—glaring at Robin just as before as soon as it imagined it couldn’t be seen.
Robin had let this idiotic performance continue for three full cycles when he saw Jowls stop in his pacing and curl his front claw. It pulled back and threw the Batarang it held from before. It threw its weapon poorly, like a baseball. Robin didn’t bother to dodge as the Batarang flew harmlessly past his legs and hit the floor behind him with a dull thud.
“Ouch,” Robin said with dry sarcasm. “Wounded to the quick, Jowls. Now if you’re done being clever—”
In a beautifully synchronized move, Robin swung his right arm outward as if pulling back to hurl his Batarang. Jowls ran to his right, and Robin pivoted, tossing a palmed object from his left hand to intercept Jowls at the edge of the platform. The thing flashed a blinding light for a split second, then exploded into a snarl of aerodynamic netting. Within seconds, the dazed monster was hopelessly tangled in a web of netting and truss, and Robin was able to collect his prisoner without fuss.
Batman focused his attention on the high-pitched shrieks, trying to locate the source. Undeniably female… and they were getting closer.
There! Batman caught the vaguest of shadows moving through the fog off to his left. He took off, running as fast as he could after the indistinct figure. After only a few seconds, he had closed the distance between himself and the wailing woman and he now understood the reason for her terrified shrieks. Behind the running woman, now only a few steps away, was a snarling, enraged man wielding a concrete birdbath like a giant club.
Batman leapt into action, springing forward and slamming into the berserker at full speed. The birdbath tumbled harmlessly away as the two bodies slid across the grass, entangled in one another. Batman was up in an instant, pulling a gas pellet from his belt. As soon as the berserker got to its feet, it was met with an open palm slapping violently against its face, the small capsule smashing open and filling the air around his head with thick green vapor.
Batman leapt back a few feet and dropped into a defensive crou ch. He knew he’d never beat the rampaging beast in single hand-to-hand combat, but it was much easier to simply dodge such an erratic fighter. The berserker ran out of the gas cloud, swinging wildly. Batman avoided the swinging arms with ease, keeping a safe distance from the snarling madman. Within a few seconds, the ferocity dwindled and the man collapsed.
Batman turned to check on the berserker’s original target. She wasn’t screaming anymore. Instead, she was staring dumbfounded at the scene before her. As Batman approached through the fog, the woman’s features becoming clearer as he neared her.
His lips curled into a sneer with recognition. “Ivy!”
“B-Batman?” Poison Ivy balked. “What are you… when… wha…”
She looked frightened, terrified, but there was more to it than that. There was something else mixed in with that horrified gaze—Panic? Confusion? He wasn’t sure, but it was entirely possible that she really was just an innocent victim here. She lived in the park, after all, so it was plausible that she heard the disturbance and came out of her lair only to run into a throng of rampaging humanity…
Whatever the case, it was obvious that it would take some time to get information out of her. She was babbling incoherently, her eyes now fixed on her downed assailant with a glassy-eyed stare.
“I didn’t… It’s not… My babies… screaming… those people…”
Batman took a step forward, his voice a commanding boom. “Ivy. What happened?”
She instantly returned her attention to Batman. “It wasn’t… I… this… wasn’t supposed to happen… I was just… spell… not this… my babies…”
Batman shot forward, grabbing Ivy by the shoulders and growling. “What did you do?”
Startled, but no more coherent, Ivy immediately went on the defensive. “I didn’t! I… it wasn’t supposed to… bun-lady said… the clearing… that stupid video… I couldn’t control…”
Batman shook her viciously, realizing that Ivy was much more than just an innocent bystander in all of this. “WHAT DID YOU DO?!”
“It’s not my fault!!” Ivy wailed, taking great offense to being handled and talked to in this manner. “I was merely trying to… that stupid video… and all those stupid men…” Her eyes locked viciously onto his, realizing that this arrogant, violent, meddling man was exactly the kind of man that had pushed her into this whole thing in the first place. “Men like you! Making a mockery out of me! Making me some… getting some cheap thrill off of… YOU made me do this! This is all your fault!!”
Ivy suddenly pushed back, flailing her arms wildly at Batman. He held her firmly in place… when searing pain shot up the back of his right shin as a new gash appeared, another scar returning. The reemergence of the wound caused his leg to jerk violently and set him off balance, sending them both tumbling to the ground.
Realizing that they were suddenly on the ground and that she, quite literally, had the upper hand, Ivy snapped. In her mind, everything that had ever gone wrong, everything bad that had ever happened to her was a result of this man on the ground beneath her. And now she had him beat—pinned to the ground, under her control. It all made sense now—the whole Roxy thing had been a fluke! She didn’t need some summoned creature! She didn’t need Selina and her ridiculous training! She was Poison Ivy, The Goddess of the Green and NO man could ever hold her down…
She raised her fist high in the air, preparing to strike a nasty blo w against Batman, against ALL men… the power of a million unrecognized paybacks clenched in her fist… the strength of all of nature condensed into one punch…
Batman’s hand suddenly shot up and two fingers prodded dangerously hard into Ivy’s underarm, striking a cluster of nerves and rendering her arm instantly useless. As her now completely harmless fist dropped like a stone to her side, Batman used the shift in her center of gravity to spin her off of him. He was instantly back on his feet and grabbing to pull her up. She began shrieking again, the culmination of all of the pain, fear, anger and frustration she’d been through in the last few hours flying out of her in a piercing cry. Her one good arm swatted at him harmlessly until another quick nerve strike rendered her completely unconscious.
As much as he wanted to leave her lying there on the ground, he knew that any berserker who stumbled across her prone form would surely rip her to shreds. With a grunt, he hefted her body up under his arm and headed toward the nearest park exit, hoping that the chaos had not extended beyond the boundary of the fog.
I knew we were in trouble as soon as we reached Robinson Park South, the street lined with hotels on the southernmost edge of the park, where the hansom cabs queue up in between the regular taxi stands. The traffic was at a standstill and people were standing along the sidewalks, all staring up at the mass of black encasing the park.
Gothamites don’t stop and gawk as a rule. Yeah, sure, that was Robert DeNiro coming out of Nobu, so what; actors gotta eat too.
But there they were, lined up around the park: gawking. It was a lucky break as far as Lois was concerned, dozens of eyewitnesses ready to utter pithy word-pictures for her readers. She went fluttering through the crowd asking what everyone had seen. Most of them missed the thing forming. They arrived late, as we had, and only noticed once the traffic ground to a halt.
After a few minutes’ fruitless searching, I thought about the hotels—the doormen would have been standing out front the whole time. I told Lois and pointed her to the front of the Plaza. The doorman was an older man, Asian, whose nametag read “Ken.” Lois melted him with a skeptical glance at the unlikely nametag and asked what his name really was that the hotel assumed tourists couldn’t pronounce. It was Cu Ba, and soon Cu Ba was telling her all that had happened since the first clouds darkened over Robinson Park.
I knew I should stay out of it. Lois was doing her job, and she knew how to question a witness. But after the part with the clouds, Cu Ba’s story shifted focus. Nobody had come out of the park since the strangeness began, and only two figures went in: Batman and Superman. The latter was quite a novelty in Gotham, and Cu Ba pointed excitedly to the sky where he had appeared, where he had flown, and where he had entered the park. Batman, he added dismissively, came in from that way—but he didn’t look right.
I knew I should stay out of it, but I wanted to know what that meant. I cut off Lois’s next question. “What do you mean he ‘didn’t look right’?” I asked.
“Swing,” he said, motioning with an index finger towards the far end of the street, “like they show on TV, on rope from up that way. But land very bad, double over.” And here Cu Ba moved both hands to his left side and bobbed slightly. “Then he stood up and run into park. Not look right.”
I looked towards that corner of the park. Not that there was anything to see except cabbies and tourists gawking at a big black wall of fog.
Lois put her hand on my shoulder. “It doesn’t mean anything,” she said.
I hate this. I HATE IT. This isn’t me. This isn’t what I do. I don’t stay behind and fret about him like some goddamn civilian.
But something was wrong at the restaurant… and before. Something had been wrong with him since the runestone.
I had already decided to go in when the fog swelled outward, right where I was looking, and Batman came running out—with an armful of green I recognized in a blink as… Poison Ivy?
No longer just a floating double-head, but now in his full fifteen-foot, winged, demonic form, Janus surveyed the battlefield before him. Hundreds of his newly created berserkers battled endlessly in front of him, clawing, pounding, biting and hammering at each other for lack of any other targets. He smiled wide, baring rows of sharp, pointed teeth, content that this was the perfect beginning of the army he desired. And it was just the beginning, he knew. He would amass an army of berserker warriors so massive as to shake the very fields of Valhalla itself. His beloved Hel would have her revenge.
An odd green mist suddenly sprayed across the battlefield, carried on a powerful wind that rivaled the gale that Janus had summoned when he arrived. The mist coated the battling berserkers, and within seconds, they began collapsing on the field.
“What?!” Janus howled in surprise.
Superman spit the crushed capsule shells from his mouth and floated in the air over the battlefield, his arms crossed over his chest.
“Release whatever hold you have over these innocent people and return to your own plane of existence. This invasion ends NOW!”
Janus sneered at the brightly-clad speck of humanity and howled in rage. “Insignificant WORM! You dare to deny the will of Janus the…”
He never got to finish the proclamation as Superman suddenly swooped in and planted a powerful uppercut on the demon’s chin, sending him hurling backward. Superman followed the sailing form, landing on the ground mere feet from where the demon finally came to rest.
“Oh, I dare,” he replied, arms back in their folded position. “Time for you to leave now.”
Janus suddenly leapt to his feet and swatted Superman away with the back of his hand. “I think not, mortal!” the demon howled. “These warriors now belong to me!”
Superman sailed backward through the air from the force of the blow. He was able to quickly stop his momentum and fly straight back toward the demon, slamming into its chest with both fists and knocking it back again. In mid-flight, Janus brought a clubbing hand down across Superman’s back, slamming him into the ground below. Janus kept himself aloft with his own powerful wings, then landed directly in front of the prone hero.
“Impressive power,” the demon chided, “but not even close to mine. I will crush you like a…”
Superman was suddenly up on his feet again, his hands latching onto the demon’s shoulders. Janus instinctively latched his talons onto Superman’s shoulders as well, and they were locked together in a powerful stance, wrestling for supremacy.
Superman was dwarfed by Janus’s huge size, but he still pressed upward against the demon’s shoulders, shoving with all of his might. Even as Janus’s powerful talons dug into his skin, he held his ground, undaunted.
“Release… *ugh*… these… people!” Superman demanded, his corded muscles straining against the weight of the demon’s powerful arms.
“Oh, I’ll release them, speck,” Janus replied, a menacing smile spreading across hi s face in spite of the struggle. “I have to. Only by releasing them from this mortal coil will they enter my beloved Hel’s domain and become the army she so richly deserves!”
Superman’s eyes widened in realization—he was going to kill them all! A renewed sense of urgency filled his body and he pressed harder against his foe, actually shoving the giant back a few feet.
A low rumble emanated from Janus’s chest that sounded like a growl but soon shifted into laughter. The demon glanced menacingly back over his own shoulder. The ground began to tremble beneath their feet as thirty large figures suddenly appeared through the fog behind Janus’s back, charging toward them. None of them matched Janus in size, but they had a similar shape—large winged creatures with gaping maws and taloned hands. And each one made completely of stone.
Gargoyles.
To his horror, Superman quickly realized that the stone monstrosities weren’t headed toward him, but were bearing down on the mass of unconscious berserkers behind him. They weren’t there to help Janus in this fight, they were there to slaughter the innocents. With an amazing burst of power, Superman actually lifted Janus off of his feet and slammed him to the ground.
He knew it wouldn’t keep Janus down for long, but it broke the stalemate hold long enough for him to get away and go after the gargoyles before they could begin their gruesome task.
One thing about Batman, he can size up a situation in seconds. When he burst out of that fog on the edge of the park, the first thing he did was scan the crowd. He saw us—and even with those lenses in, I could read the thought from the way he turned his head—he didn’t know what we were doing there. And then he saw Lois’s hands: pen, pad, tape recorder… ah. Grunt. I couldn’t hear it from this distance, but I’m sure it was there. Grunt. That’s his way.
We went up to him. I looked at the bundle he carried and stated the obvious: “You have an armful of garden slut,” I noted, pointing to Poison Ivy.
“Lenses disengage,” he growled. I love that tone. When he doesn’t want to acknowledge the teasing.
Then something weird happened. His whole side spasmed and dumped the armful of unconscious garden slut onto the sidewalk.
“Hey, hey, hey,” I blurted, bending down to check how her head hit the concrete. “Ivy’s not exactly my favorite person, y’know, but come on.”
“I’m fine,” he said mechanically. It’s what he’d said at the restaurant. It’s what he’d said on the roof last night. I would have asked what he meant by it, but just then I saw these little cards that had spilled out from Ivy’s graceless tumble.
“The Curiosity Shop,” I read. “16th and Lexington. 15% off.”
“Go,” Batman ordered. “Take Lois, see what they know. It’s about Berserkers. And maybe gargoyles.”
“For real or just sending us out of harm’s way?”
“Um, guys,” Lois interrupted. We turned and she was pointing down Fifth Avenue. Despite all that was happening, it still took a minute to process what I was seeing. It’s like that when something is so completely wrong. You’re so sure your eyes must be lying to you, it takes a minute to really see what you’re seeing.
“Speak of the devil,” I murmured.
It was a gargoyle—the kind I see every night—same size, shape, texture—except it was walking up Fifth Avenue toward s the park. It didn’t actually speak, but you could still hear it. Somehow you could hear its words in your head.
˜˜Six thousand was my right,˜˜ it said, ˜˜Six thousand will be mine. First shall be thou, Dark Mortal, first of six thousand pledged but never yielded.˜˜
“Selina,” a far more familiar voice graveled in my ear, “Go. Now. Berserkers and gargoyles. Now.”
Superman managed to stop about half of the charging gargoyles on his first swooping pass. Though magically enchanted, they were still simply made of stone. He blasted through the rank of charging beasts, shattering many of them with a single punch. He quickly went to work on the others, demolishing them with great punches or high-intensity blasts of his heat vision. Dust and debris littered the ground beneath him as he landed, scanning the mass of unconscious, but unharmed human bodies.
In the distance, he heard Janus’s menacing laughter, as the ground began to shake again. Another pack of gargoyles charged across the field.
The “Curiosity Shop” was locked up when we got there. I wasn’t about to let that stop me, and I wasn’t going to waste time explaining to Lois. It took less than a minute to open the door. Another to bypass the alarm. I headed for the counter, certain I would find some clue to where the shop owner lived. I got as far as this little nameplate: Miriam Nash, Venus in Scorpio, when all of a sudden, a kind of white numbness hit me.
I heard Lois utter a sort of “uuohh” noise, but when I turned to see… I found I couldn’t turn at all.
I was… frozen.
This was not good.
I couldn’t quite think straight…
to work out…
what to…
do…
next…
…
…But I’m pretty sure I was only standing like that for a minute when the woman came. I couldn’t see where she came from, but she was suddenly there. Shortish, gray hair, glasses, like a funky librarian. Presumably “Miriam Nash—Venus in Scorpio.” She took the little card from my hand and looked at it, then up at me.
“Arcquix conquiescete,” she said. I felt my legs flush warm suddenly.
“You can move now,” she told us, just as Lois started spurting a lot of questions I didn’t bother listening to. “A kind of magical burglar alarm. I expect you’re here about the green woman?” she went on, indicating the card.
“Yes,” I nodded. “Poison Ivy. She’s… I don’t know what the hell she’s done but—”
“Hell is exactly what she’s done. And your timing is rather unfortunate, ladies. I was on my way there, to the scheol fissure, when your tripping my alarm brought me back here.”
“Look, Miriam,” I said, “under other circumstances, I’m on board with the crisp matter-of-fact attitude towards breaking and entering. But in this case, we broke in TO GET A HOLD OF YOU. We’ve got… there are… people that we care about are trapped in that park right now. And all hell is breaking loose in there. What did you call it, a fissure?”
“Yes, a scheol fissure, a tear between our world and the world of the dead. Your friend with the green skin opened it, or… No, not quite. She…” Miriam trailed off and seemed to listen, then she looked up at me. She looked exactly like a funky librarian that just found the out of print reference you wanted. “She awakened something—Janus, most likely—and channeled power into him until he opened the fissure.”
“How do we close it?” I asked.
“Closing a door that never should have opened is simple if you can find out why it was opened in the first place. The difficulty will be sending back what has already come through it.”
Lois stepped up, in full reporter mode. “Hang on, we know ‘Who’: Janus. When and Where are covered. So let’s go back and hit ‘What’ before we tackle the Whys. What exactly is a scheol fissure and what is coming through it?”
“It’s an opening between worlds,” Miriam said, “Janus is also called Bifrons. By that name, he is a lord of the underworld, commanding legions of dark beings. Any of them would heed his call. I don’t know, I can’t sense what is coming through the fissure, but it’s a good bet that he opened it for the purpose of letting it into our world. If you can find out what it is, you’ll probably learn the whys.”
“It’s that,” I said, pointing to a corner of gargoyle statues. “Except big. It—one of them, at least—looked just like that one.”
Miriam went to the table and picked up the statue. “This one?” she asked.
I nodded.
“This is Blostiban, Guardian of the Fifth Circle—and an aspect of Hel, the Norse goddess of the underworld. This is what Bifrons called forth?”
“That’s what we saw, yes.”
“Your green friend’s name isn’t Hel or Blostiban, is it?” Miriam asked skeptically.
“It’s Pamela.”
She sighed—a rather perturbed sigh often heard in conjunction with Pammy, one way or another. “That makes no sense,” Miriam said at last. “But the spell I gave her is to right a wrong. And Hel was certainly wronged.”
“How?” Lois asked.
“And does it have anything to do with Berserkers?” I added.
Miriam took us into a back room and dug out one of those books you only see in horror movies—or Jason Blood’s library. It was large, the size of a small table top, covered in thick dark leather that was carved and embossed with symbols. She turned the strangely thick pages—vellum, maybe, or heavy paper coated with some kind of lacquer.
While she read, a little cat, a beautiful Korat with luminous green eyes and a coat just about Whiskers’s shade of blue-gray, leapt down from the bookcase and landed in our midst.
“Greymalkin, NO,” Miriam wailed, trying to collect the cat while it swatted her sleeve and played with the pages.
“Maybe you should—” Lois started to say.
“I had the same thought,” I told her quietly. Under other circumstances it would be fun to watch, this sorceress flummoxed by her own cat. But we were pressed for time. I picked up Greymalkin and settled in a corner chair. I spent the next ten minutes telling the little darling how beautiful she was and letting her chew my handbag.
When Miriam was ready, she waved us back to her place at the table.
“The Sagas of Norse mythology say that the gods and the giants were destined to fight a great war called Ragnarok. To prepare for the great battle, they made a bargain: the Valkrye would bring half of all the dead warriors to Odin. They became the army of the gods. The other half they left for Hel, to fight on the side of the giants. ; But Odin cheated. Not all Viking warriors were the same. There were some called Berserkers that were stronger, fiercer, possessed of an inhuman rage, incredible strength, unimaginable violence, and—”
“And they were magical,” I whispered, thinking of what happened to Bruce. “They could draw on magic, as long as it served the killing?”
“Some legends say yes, they were magically immune from weapons… The Berserkers were Odin’s special property. His name actually comes from the German words for ‘rage’ and ‘possessed.’ So Odin took all the Berserkers. And that’s how he cheated. The two armies were equal in number, but whenever a Berserker fell, he was brought to Odin. It would be like having a ‘fair fight’ between the Vienna Boys’ Choir and the Pittsburgh Steelers.”
“So… righting the wrong?” Lois asked.
“Bifrons wants to give Hel the Berserkers she should have had to fight at Ragnarok.”
I felt my blood run cold. Bruce had been a Berserker. Six thousand was my right… Pledged but never yielded… First shall be thou, Dark… Mortal.
“If this Hel is goddess of the underworld,” I started to speak my thought. “If she’s a goddess of the underworld, then to give her the Berserkers he’s making, Bifrons will have to—to make them dead?”
Miriam nodded.
“Yes. And since they are immune to weapons and the fiercest attacks, that’s why he would have opened the fissure to bring forth demons that could kill them. Even a Berserker will die if you twist its head off.”
“HOW DO WE—” I stopped. I was shouting and Greymalkin had squirmed at my volume. Her back legs tore deep into my arm as she jumped down. I took a breath and began again more calmly. “How do we stop them? How do we send them back? And—and then how do we close that damned door?”
Batman rolled right, dodging the huge stony arm swinging in his direction. Thankfully, most of the bystanders had scattered when the gargoyle had come stomping up the street, so now it was just him and the animated statue, battling it out amongst the abandoned cars on Fifth Avenue.
He cursed himself for not packing any explosives in this spare suit’s utility belt. Though huge and menacing, the gargoyle was still only stone. A well-placed concussion grenade would have ended this fight ten minutes ago, though he wasn’t doing too badly with just batarangs and strategic kicks.
One of the gargoyle’s “knees” was almost completely crumbled and the huge thing stumbled slightly anytime it shifted its massive weight to that side. There were large chunks of stone missing from various parts of its body and it was missing the tip of one ear. And, Batman noted, it had several claw/puncture marks on the side of its head and a worn groove that circled its neck, though those were not from this fight. No, those were a result of countless grappling hooks and lines that had latched onto its neck night after night as it had sat on its perch on the roof of the Grupnel Towers.
Spying those scratch marks again as he came out of the roll, Batman came up with a plan. He could use a grapnel line to grab the rampaging statue and pull it over without having to risk another close assault. He pulled the grapnel gun from his belt, aimed it and fired.
Though the gargoyle face never actually moved or showed any expression other than the one it had been carved with, Batman could immediately sense a shift in the thing’s demeanor—even before the strange voice invaded his mind again.
˜˜N O! No more swinging!! No more ropes!!˜˜
The thing clutched at the grapnel in its neck and yanked it out, then pulled the silk batline so hard that it wrenched the gun from Batman’s hand. The thing charged him fast, its mental voice howling in Batman’s mind.
Batman easily leapt clear of the charging gargoyle and landed on the hood of a nearby car. The charge had brought it close enough for another close assault. Batman crouched lightly, waiting for just the right moment to spring toward his foe with a perfectly aimed kick that would take that crumbled knee out once and for all.
If he had been given the time to study the strange phenomenon of his scars returning, if he hadn’t jumped immediately into this bizarre case that forced him to handle the reemergence of his old wounds in the field, he would have noticed a few things. First, that the scars had been returning in the reverse order in which he had received them. Second, that with each passing moment, the speed with which they were returning was increasing exponentially. Given that information, he could have calculated—or at least estimated—when certain scars would return.
If given the chance, he could have seen what was coming.
He could have traced the “road map” of his scars backward and determined that his body had just reached that horrible night—the night that he had battled another huge monstrosity and lost.
The night he’d fought Bane.
White hot pain stabbed through his lower back like an iron spike. His knees buckled as he lost all feeling below the waist and he collapsed onto the hood of the car.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Bruce’s objections to magic. I’ve come to the conclusion that my own are very different. With Bruce, it’s all tied up with the kind of man he is. Scientist, yes. Intellectual, sure. Detective, first, last and always. You wouldn’t expect him to be gung ho about anything that messes with the way the world is supposed to work. But it’s more than that. It’s about right and wrong. His ideas about right and wrong are not open for discussion.
That’s not my kink. Never has been; never will be.
No, my issues with magic come down to people like this Miriam Nash.
“Closing a door that never should have opened is simple if you can find out why it was opened in the first place.” That’s what our witch-lady said. Then she spends the next ten minutes decking us out in all kinds of charms and herb oils for “protection.”
“If you shut a door that somebody else opened, they might come to find out why. And these aren’t exactly the cranky 4th-floor neighbors blocking the elevator open with their golf clubs. Put these on.”
She handed me another crystal, and Lois a carved fish on a ribbon.
“Um, Miriam?” Lois began. Miriam cut her off with a spritz from yet another atomizer and flogged the pendant on her neck with a sprig of something leafy. I got a strong whiff of clove, carnation and bayberry.
“Why am I not surprised you hit it off with Poison Ivy,” I grumbled when she got to me. Spritz! And a cloud of hyacinth, juniper and frankincense joined the other scents. She swatted my crystal with the leafy thing and I saw it was a handful of fresh sage.
“Now the gems,” she muttered. “Prehnite, ruby, garnet, black tourmaline, and hawk’s eye should do it.” She went over to a strange cabinet she had against a back wall, like an old-fashioned druggist’s cabinet. It was shallow, and covered with rows and rows of tiny little dra wers. Lois looked at me.
“She said closing the door was simple,” Lois hissed.
“For me, cracking the safe at the diamond exchange is two minutes’ cat’s play,” I told her, “but I wouldn’t go around calling it ‘simple’ if only because of the nine armed guards you have to get through first.”
“I guess magic folks have a different idea of what’s simple.”
“Lois, I go drinking with the craziest crazies in this city, and nobody’s idea of ‘simple’ involves fourteen layers of protection against pissed off hell-lords.”
“Good news!” Miriam announced brightly, “I found some leopard skin agate, very protective, especially against sorcery and possession. And it fits your theme, dear!”
“Oh good,” I sighed. Meow for the theme.
We sat in a circle around the small ritual table in Miriam’s backroom. We had joined hands. Between my right palm and Miriam’s left was the leopard skin agate. Between my left and Lois’s right was a red tiger eye. Miriam was quite confident this would be our best strategy. Since neither Lois nor I were “experienced practitioners”, we had to make use of every advantage, and my connection with cats was evidently a plus.
I would have felt a whole lot better about that theory if Miriam’s own bundle of feline joy, Greymalkin, hadn’t trashed the ritual table when she was setting it up. I tried not to think about that. Miriam had stressed the importance of focusing on the spell and the spell only.
I closed my eyes while Miriam muttered her incantations. I inhaled the incense, sandalwood, jasmine, and… there was a distraction. Greymalkin had returned from wherever Miriam put her. The cat was in my lap, burying its head into the crook of my arm.
I recalled the discipline of meditation, I recalled meditating with Sensei… I inhaled again deeply and let the drone of Miriam’s chanting lull me… I recalled… I realized… Miriam had stressed focusing on the spell and the spell only… I realized this is where Poison Ivy failed. Pamela has no patience. Pamela has no discipline. She complained about the rolls when I tried to train her. She wouldn’t meditate at all… Miriam’s soft voice continued to murmur… sandalwood, jasmine… I saw it all unfolding.
“This wasn’t an accident,” I heard my voice saying. It wasn’t. I knew it now, I could sense it the same way my nose could smell the incense. “There are no accidents. Something wanted this. Distractions. Janus for Ivy. Two Faces. So easy to lead her where he wanted her to go. Janus has two faces. A cat for me. They’re fighting us. Anything to distract us. They’re vulnerable. They’re so vulnerable. Easy to stop them. Easy to close the door, to send them back, to free the others. Just don’t let them distract… Janus for Ivy. Cat for me. Back for—oh, god!”
Bruce.
Batman’s back injury had been a subject of much speculation over the years. The press had known very little about the sudden change in Batman’s appearance, style and methodology. They simply concluded that the much publicized battle between him and the monstrosity known as Bane must have left the real Batman incapacitated, resulting in someone acting as a “Replacement Bat.” In the superhero community, speculation over the extent of the damage dealt to the original Da rk Knight ran the gamut from “minor muscle strain” to “permanent debilitation.”
In reality, the wound had been severe but not permanent. From Bane’s “back-breaker” maneuver, Bruce had suffered a minor fracture in his L3 vertebrae and a massive herniation to his L3-L4 vertebral disc. The disc had swollen to the point where it was pressing on his spinal column, causing temporary paralysis from the waist down. After a painful spinal tap and months of anti-inflammatory medication and physical therapy, Bruce had worked himself back into peak physical condition. The path to recovery had been long and arduous, but Bruce knew better than to try to push himself too quickly. Back injuries were not something to mess around with.
In the end, he was able to reclaim the mantle from Jean Paul and resume his career as Gotham’s primary protector. Upon his return, Bruce did make some modifications to the Batsuit—though nowhere near the kinds of changes Jean Paul had made—including extra support/protection for his lower back.
All of that was of little comfort as he lay crumpled on the hood of the car with no feeling in the lower half of his body. He knew he had little time—Blostiban would be turning her ire on him at any moment. He grabbed the side of the car with both hands and pulled hard, yanking himself over the side and landing hard on the concrete sidewalk with a thump.
Quickly scanning the contents of his utility belt, looking for something—anything—to combat the giant stone monstrosity, Batman began formulating his plan. If the back injury followed the same course as the other returning wounds, he would only be incapacitated for a few more seconds—but how long would it take for full motor function to return? He needed to find something to keep Blostiban busy until he was able to stand again and fight…
There was a great wrenching sound as the car he was hiding behind lifted up suddenly and was tossed aside like a piece of errant litter. Blostiban towered over Batman’s prone form, staring down with that hideous, stone snout. Reacting quickly, Batman tossed a smoke pellet into the monster’s face. He knew that the smoke would have no effect as a choking or debilitating agent, but he hoped for enough confusion to give him the precious seconds he needed.
Pinpricks began dancing up and down his legs. He rolled and pulled himself over the sidewalk to a nearby parking meter and began using his muscular arms to pull himself upright. His normal bench-press was nearly three times his body weight, so strength wasn’t the problem—the problem was maneuvering the dead weight of his lower body. He’d just managed to get himself upright—albeit a half-standing/half-leaning posture against the parking meter—when Blostiban was towering over him again, the last vestiges of the smoke-bomb dissipating around the gargoyle’s head.
The thing reared a massive stone arm back, preparing to strike, then paused. The gargoyle’s head tilted slightly to the side as if regarding Batman in curiosity.
˜˜You are wounded, Dark Mortal?˜˜ The voice rolled through Batman’s mind again. ˜˜Perhaps you are not the warrior that I thought.˜˜
Batman steadied himself against the pole. He was starting to regain the feeling in his lower extremities, but he still didn’t have the leg-strength to hold himself up unassisted. He stared back viciously at the giant form, silently daring it to continue its assault.
Blostiban’s head straightened. ˜˜No matter. If you are deemed worthy, you will make a fine addition to my army. If not, I will enjoy feasting on your entrails.˜˜
The arm came swinging in and Batman shoved hard against the pole, propelling himself backward away from the blow. As he landed roughly on t he concrete, he realized that he had actually felt his legs adding to the push. He tried to curl his legs to attempt to stand and pain shot up his back again. It was dangerous to move this much while his back tried to heal—the best plan was to lie still and just let it happen. Unfortunately, there was a fifteen foot stone behemoth with other ideas.
Batman pulled one of the heavier Batarangs out of his belt and tossed it with deadly accuracy. The metal weapon spun through the air, heading straight for the statue’s crumbled knee. It wasn’t enough to knock the entire knee loose, but it did cause Blostiban to stumble once more. The monster howled again, mentally, then charged in, scooping up Batman before he could get away.
Now caught in the mighty beast’s grip, Batman pulled a small bulb from his utility belt. The bulb, divided in the middle, contained two inert fluids that, when combined, created a highly corrosive acid. Again, he doubted that it would cause the huge beast any pain, but it might give him the ability to slip away. Blostiban held Batman up, reaching with her other hand to grab at his head—then suddenly she stopped, her head whipping around as if she’d just heard a loud noise behind her. She stood there, completely motionless, staring back up the street. She stood that way so long that Batman wondered if she might be returning to her unanimated statue form.
Then, Blostiban moved again, this time turning to face whatever it was that drew her attention.
˜˜Meddlesome, interfering bitches!˜˜ Batman heard the enraged voice in his mind, the mental words oozing with contempt. The gargoyle threw Batman to the ground like a child angrily discarding a broken toy and stomped off down the street.
Batman lay on the ground, pain racing through his body. The landing had hurt but the pain in his lower back was worse. He considered getting up to follow after Blostiban, but another shot of pain racing up his back changed his mind. He lay there, silently cursing Fate as the muscles in his legs started to throb. After a few more seconds, he felt strong enough to stand.
Down the street, the gargoyle turned a corner and disappeared. Where was it going?!
Then the words echoed through his head again. ˜˜Meddlesome, interfering bitches!˜˜
Oh, god.
Selina.
Adding to my growing list of issues about magic: apparently the simple ritual to close the hell-door can spontaneously shift into a mind-blowing vortex of revelation if whatever spirit force you summon likes the cut of your jib.
Adding to my growing list of issues about magic: I don’t like agreeing with Batman this much! I really don’t. But sorry, he’s got a point on this one. There is something to be said for the reliability of science. You heat water to 212° F, it boils. Every time! No guesswork.
With magic, somebody like Miriam puts a ritual together based on whatever she knows about the herbs and the gems and the symbols and the Big Bad Magical Thing uptown trying to rip Bruce’s head off. It turns out if she happens to lock into something like oh, say, a cat-theme when Norse mythology is involved…
“Oh, I see what happened! Just look at this, I had no idea. The Nordic seeresses, the Volva, were tied to cats! It says they wore capes and hoods lined with catskin and catskin gloves. In their Seidr rituals, they would slip into a trancelike state to commune with spirits to learn the answers to questions… They would just open their mouth and chant out the answers.”
I would have happily slammed that great big book shut on her fingers, but I was too preoccupied with what I had seen in that vision. I wanted to make sense of it all be fore it faded—I didn’t have time to indulge in getting pissed.
“That does sound like what happened to you, Selina,” Lois chimed in. I glared at her, reconsidering my membership in the Lois Lane Preservation Society.
“I expect the Spirit Forces were intrigued by you,” Miriam concluded happily, “a newcomer as you are to the Craft, but ˜˜COMING FOR YOU˜˜ tied to cats and therefore the ancient Egyptian spirits, ˜˜COMING FOR YOU˜˜ focused on your meditation, and draped in such suitable ˜˜COMING FOR YOU, INTERFERING BITCHES˜˜ feline imagery—”
“We have to go,” I said, “We have to get out of here, now. It’s coming for us.”
They both stared at me.
˜˜INTERFERING BITCHES, COMING FOR YOU NOW!˜˜
I realized too late that I wasn’t making sense. They didn’t hear it, the voice was sounding in my head just like it had outside the park. It was the thing from the park, the gargoyle-thing that fought Batman, I could sense it. It was coming to get us before we could try another ritual. We heard the door to the shop burst open and saw the big lumbering thing coming through the outer room.
“Selina,” Lois hissed, “What you did to Prometheus that time—”
“1-No element of surprise here,” I spat out quickly, “2-No bullwhip, 3-I only distracted him for a minute until one of the heroes could—”
I didn’t get to 4-and Prometheus was after the Justice League whereas this thing was here for US, when our big stone friend shattered the counter in its path and loomed in the doorway. Miriam’s backroom is a lot like Kittlemeier’s—with one critical difference I’d already noticed. Kittlemeier smokes, and he likes to duck out the backdoor for a few puffs before a fitting. Miriam’s backroom had no backdoor. There was only one way out—and Hel/Blostiban was completely blocking it. She was too big to come through it, but that was no consolation considering what she’d already done to the front door and the counter.
But she… it didn’t burst through. It stood there staring angrily. Not that it had any facial expression; it was still a big stone gargoyle. But you could feel the rage pouring off it in waves. And the voice echoed in my mind again, louder than before.
˜˜MORTALS. INSECTS. HOW DARE YOU INTERFERE.˜˜
“It can’t harm us,” Miriam said calmly. “The protections I put in place are very powerful.” She stepped forward, between Lois and I, and took our hands. I felt the stone again between our palms like before.
“Ċøŋfųţă, Đěşįįţ, Ŀěŋtœšċå,” Miriam called out. It was a strong, commanding voice, like I’ve heard Jason use when incanting.
Blostiban didn’t seem impressed—but I imagine that’s just the demon equivalent of rooftop bluster. Catwoman’s Rule #12: you never let on if “That’s far enough, Catwoman!” was a surprise. You bluff. This thing was bluffing. Miriam was getting to it. It didn’t look any different but it underwent the reverse of Bruce slipping into BatMode. It got less dense.
“Ċøŋfųţă, Đěşįįţ, Ŀěŋtœšċå,” Miriam repeated, “There is nothing for you here, Blostiban of the Fifth Circle, aspect of Hel and daughter of—”
˜˜Ruhe, Hexe DämonFrau! Das Berserkergang sind meine, ich hat, was meins ist! ˜˜
It lost even more density, now you could see it, the rock collapsing in on itself while a thick stinking mist started oozing out of its pores. It was like the rock itself was smoking and, at the same time, the smoke was eating away the rock until all that remained was this solid mass of fog. It was similar to the vision I’d had of Ivy in Robinson Park, but the smoky form that confronted her was Janus, a head with two faces looking out front and back. This was a solid mass of fog without form—half black as night, and half white as snow.
“So you abandon your aspect of Blostiban and appear before us as Hella?” Miriam sneered, “You have no more sway in this form than the other, daughter of Loki.”
Add to that growing list about magic: focusing on the hocus-pocus, magicians often miss the point.
“Um Miriam,” I pointed out the obvious as it was happening, “She might not have any extra powers this way, but she can fit through the door.”
The foggy mist had already seeped into the room and thickened again around us. It brought a clammy suffocating aura with it that was quite disgusting, but seemed otherwise harmless… The black was on my side, the white on Lois’s. Something about that tugged somewhere in my brain. This black and white meant something, but I couldn’t see what—not yet. Then the mist solidified again, it pulled together and thickened into a solid form right in front of Miriam. It was no longer a gargoyle; it was a woman. Half of her face was lovely, half was ugly and misshapen. From her waist up, her skin was pink and alive, while her waist down was dead and rotting.
The something-thought tugging in my brain clicked, suddenly it clicked, it all made sense, and I started to laugh.
Miriam was chanting in earnest, and the remaining mist started to clear.
I thought about a picnic basket left beside a leopard statue in a closed jewelry store near the opera house…
And a note somehow slipped into my pocket when I went out to get my morning coffee…
Miriam chanted on, the woman-shape started to fade, the mist was completely gone, and I was still chuckling.
I thought about a diamond cat pin with emerald eyes locked in a safe…
Another in a gift box, in his pocket, and an exquisite garden set for a romantic candlelit dinner.
The last piece of the puzzle was ours.
I thought about a Valentine’s Day when Harvey called in bomb threats to 22 different florists to shut them down on their busiest day of the year…
To lessen “the sick massacre of all those roses.”
“WHAT is so funny,” Lois demanded, leaning forward to look over at me without releasing Miriam’s hand.
“Are we alone?” I asked.
“Probably,” was the less-than-assuring answer from Miriam.
“Now I get it,” I told them, “Hel and Janus. They’re a couple! This isn’t some random goddess whose wrong he decided to set right because Ivy just happened to summon him by accident; they’re a couple! With the two faces and the black and white mist split down the center, these guys are made for each other.”
“And knowing that helps us how?” Lois asked testily.
“This isn’t about opening or closing a portal to Hell,” I told her excitedly, “It’s about the lengths men go to impress women.”
“And that helps us how???” Lois repeated.
“I have absolutely no idea,” I admitted.
The ground beneath Superman’s feet was littered with so much rubble, debris, and dust, it looked like a ten-story building had collapsed. He’d just dispatched the latest round of gargoyles—the fourth wave—and he glanced over at the clump of unconscious human bodies, brushing the dust off of his arms.
In between “rounds” with the gargoyles, he’d managed to make several quick trips to carry many of the knocked-out berserkers to a safer distance halfway across the park. There were still close to a hundred bodies in the middle of the field, but thankfully, no innocent human had been killed.
He peered through the thick fog and could just barely make out Janus’s hulking form. The demon was taking long strides, nearing the concrete-strewn battlefield.
“Okay, Janus,” Superman muttered to himself, “I’ve dispatched your minions. It’s your turn.”
As the demon neared, Superman heard its low rumbling laughter. There was something else underneath the derisive laughter, though—a strange busy chatter coming from somewhere behind the lumbering beast. Superman tried to block out the laughter and concentrate on the other noise—trying to pinpoint where it was coming from.
“Impressive display, Mortal,” Janus laughed. The underlying noise grew louder and Superman realized it was a low, chanting voice and it appeared to be coming from somewhere directly behind Janus. Then it dawned on him: it was Janus’s other face—the one in the back of his head. It was chanting in a strange, rhythmic and ancient dialect. He was casting a spell!
“But ultimately, all for naught,” the demon continued, raising his hands slowly as the chanting got louder and more intense.
A strong wind poured over the battlefield, kicking up the dust and debris at Superman’s feet. Superman hopped back a few steps, out of the pile of rubble as the wind continued to pick up. Small cyclones formed right in front of him, scooping up the rubble and blowing fiercely.
At first, Superman believed that Janus was simply clearing the battlefield, moving the debris aside to give them ample room to fight. But even after the rubble was gone, the cyclones persisted—close to a hundred 12-15 foot tornadoes danced across the field, never touching down or causing damage, simply hovering a few inches off the ground. Janus controlled them all with waves of his hands, sending them all dancing about in strange patterns.
Then suddenly, the winds began to slow and dissipate. To Superman’s internal horror, he noticed that standing in the middle of each miniature tornado was a perfectly reformed gargoyle. He’d originally combated them all in waves of twenty to thirty, but now, he had a pack of a hundred stone monstrosities, all staring directly at him.
He said nothing, simply stared straight at Janus. With a sudden ferocity, he spun and blasted the closest gargoyle with a powerful punch, shattering it instantly. The gargoyle exploded into thousands of pieces… but the pieces simply hung in the air a moment, then reconstituted back into the gargoyle.
Janus laughed again and underneath the hideous laughter, the other voice, the voice of that other face, continued chanting.
Superman discreetly flicked on his comlink.
“Batman? What’s your status?”
Batman stared up the street, his eyes locked on the area where he had last seen Blostiban. For the first time in years, he was torn—torn between chasing after the rampaging gargoyle headed toward Selina and reentering the park.
He knew the women had obviously made it to The Curiosity Shop—that they had already begun to work on reversing this chaos. He was fairly cer tain they must be the “Meddlesome, interfering bitches” that Blostiban had been mentally screaming about when she left. He hoped that they would have the time to disperse all of this before the monstrous gargoyle reached them.
But if not… He started to head up the street after Blostiban, his legs still slightly wobbly. He’d made it all of two shaky strides when a voice blared through his communicator.
..::Batman? What’s your status?::..
Clark. And worse, he knew that tone in the Man of Steel’s voice, he knew it all too well—he needed a hand.
Batman silently cursed himself for even considering chasing the gargoyle. Selina could take care of herself—he knew that more than any other person on the planet. Plus, if they had already reached Ivy’s magic source and were working on a resolution, they were safer there than anywhere else.
He activated his communicator as he ran toward the park entrance, the last of the weakness finally leaving his legs. “Southeast Entrance. On my way.”
The streets and sidewalks were still devoid of people. Most Gothamites—while surprisingly jaded when it came to witnessing street crime or supervillain crime sprees—were smart enough to realize that huge, looming mists over Robinson Park and animated, angry gargoyles stomping up the street meant it was time to vacate the area.
As he quickly neared the entrance to the park, Batman noticed that there was one person whose disappearance from the scene was conspicuous: Ivy. He remembered dumping her unconscious body right outside of the entrance when he had emerged earlier. He remembered Selina and Lois not taking her with them as they left for the magic shop. He had a vague recollection of seeing her body still lying on the sidewalk during his battle with the gargoyle. But now, she was gone.
He quickly scanned the area but didn’t see her. It would have to wait. Clark was in trouble.
Clark’s brilliant plan.
No sooner had I told Lois I didn’t know how the truth about Hel and Janus would help us, I did see how it would help.
The cage. Clark’s brilliant plan.
“You want to pull Blostiban of the Fifth Circle, aspect of Hel the goddess of Nifilheim, into the POWDER ROOM for some GIRL TALK?” Lois screeched.
“Six thousand dead Berserkers is a hell of a big gift to be accepting, no pun intended. I think we should sit her down and make sure she knows what she’s getting into, yes.”
“You’re insane!” Lois said.
But Miriam took my side, “He is raising an army of freakishly strong magical warriors, I’d imagine he’s expecting something more than a goodnight kiss. Yes, that approach might work. Goddesses are notoriously proud and no one tells them what to do, even a significant other. She may respond if you can put it to her properly. But I doubt she would return here for a chat, no matter how we entreated. She only came before to prevent our closing the fissure.”
“The park,” I said. “She’ll probably be heading back to the park to collect her Berserkers. What if we summon her from inside Robinson Park? Janus is right there, strutting around like the big man, running the show. It’s perfect.”
“It is,” Miriam agreed. “But after that confrontation earlier, I’m sure she won’t answer my summons no matter what. You two will have to do it without me. And you’ll need a third; I doubt two would be sufficient even if you were experienced witches. Your friend Poison Ivy will have to help you.”
“Come again?”
“Your frie nd Poison Ivy—it was her mishandling of the Magicks that brought this about. You mess around with the Magicks, there is a debt.”
I was about to remind her that no one tells a goddess what to do, when Lois cleared her throat.
“The park is crawling with Berserkers,” she reminded us. “And you don’t even have your whip, remember.”
“Lois, I would be happier in costume, I would be happier with costume, claws and cat-o-nine tails, but there isn’t time to go all the way home and—”
“Wait,” Miriam said. She was looking at me strangely. “Your whip may be accessible.” She had that listening-look again, the research librarian on a case—and then the pleased smile that she’d found your reference for you. “Yes, of course. Jason Blood, Jason Blood now lives in your old apartment, right on the park.”
They all do this, all the magic types. They all have this annoying habit of knowing surprising and personal details that they just pull out of the air. Every single non-magic mask-wearer I know has cursed them for it at one time or another.
“Don’t be silly, my dear,” Miriam interrupted—although I hadn’t said a word of this out loud. “This isn’t some psychic second sight, it’s good business to remember my customers’ wants and needs. I know that Jason moved recently because he bought Tempus Stones from me to set up a temporal field in his new flat.”
I blinked at her. So did Lois.
“Oh, now I have to explain Tempus Fields,” she sighed wearily. “People are not meant to travel through time. It disrupts the natural cause-and-effect of what we do shaping who we are, and who we are guiding what we do. Stuff, on the other hand, inanimate objects, have no memories, no experiences. They don't grow or make choices. Stuff simply is. It remains static and unchanging at many points in time. It’s quite common, among magick users, to—oh, how to put this in layman’s terms—to ‘reshuffle’ time in order to store a great many objects in a very small space. Follow?”
“Sure, why not,” I said.
“Good. Now Tempus Fields are created with Tempus Stones. You can make your own. Most witches and wizards do try it themselves once or twice when they’re young and have more enthusiasm than sense. But after a while, who needs to bother with a twenty-seven night ritual and all the radiation burns. Not to mention some of those ancient Acadian words are hard for English speakers to pronounce. It’s much easier to buy them from… well, from me.”
I’m still not a fan of magic; I’m still working on that list. But I let Miriam open a portal to transport us back to Robinson Park. There was no time to waste with another frenzied run across town.
We split up as soon as we stepped out of the portal, I to retrieve my costume and Lois to find Poison Ivy.
I had no trouble breaking into Jason’s apartment. Miriam was quite sure the magical protections she had us decked out in (I still smelled like a spice rack), combined with the fact that this space had been my home for years, would circumvent any spells Jason had in place to stop intruders.
I took a quick look around, noting all that was similar and different. Jason had a mail table in the entrance, just as I had. His was an antique, Spanish, probably, with a lovely Mantegna painting over it. Where I had an urn stand with a spray of flowers, he had a suit of armor. It’s interesting, Jason has an eye for quality, bu t for a modern man under ninety, his tastes do run to the stodgily old-fashioned: mirror from the 20s, Regency chaise longue, 16th century desk… It’s all beautiful, but even in the big mansions in Bristol, even those old fossils aren’t quite as relentless in the use of antiques.
I continued my search. The kitchen, breakfast nook, guest closet and guest bath were very much as they used to be. Jason uses the same room I did for his bedroom, and I quickly checked the closet and master bath…
Miriam said Jason would have a Power Center, a sanctum sanctorum with his spell books and magic paraphernalia. She said that’s where I would find the Tempus Stones. I double-checked the bookcases by the desk. There was quite an assortment—history, magic, myth—but more like reference books, not spell books as far as I could tell. Not out in the open that way. Miriam said I should be alert for some part of the flat that I felt uncomfortable going near since most wizards would set up an avoidance zone to protect their Center. But I hadn’t felt anything, and I’d been over the whole place.
Except I hadn’t.
My old exercise room. I had forgotten it completely. I even walked past the door when I checked the guest bath. I marched down the hall, cursing magicians and their head games every step of the way. Under normal circumstances, I might feel awkward breaking in on a friend, invading Jason’s private space. Not now. I opened the door…
It was a simple room. No clutter. Nothing to distract, I suppose. There was a stone fountain with running water. The floor was stripped to the concrete with a kind of rag carpet over it. And there were the bookshelves. The real spellbooks. Even I could see that. And three smooth, polished stones carved with symbols.
I picked them up… and felt a cold shudder like icy electricity across my teeth. The thought shivered down my spine: it’s been a while since I’ve stolen anything. And I’d never taken from a friend. This might not be the GCPD’s idea of theft, but this was Jason’s home now, and I had broken in, and I was taking—or at least borrowing—his magic. It felt wrong.
I could hear Bruce as clearly as if he was standing behind me: “With magic, there is always a price.” I could hear Batman too: “You can’t go waltzing into somebody else’s home and take something that doesn’t belong to you, Catwoman.” And I could hear Miriam: “You mess around with the Magicks, there is a debt.”
There was no time to worry about it. This needed to happen. If I owed Jason Blood a debt at the end of it, so be it. I brought the Tempus Stones to the bedroom, and arranged them in a triangle as Miriam instructed, under the bed around the spot where I used to keep my costume. I held the image in my mind, reached in, and just like that, my fingers touched soft leather. I retrieved the whip, claws, and gas grenades the same way.
I replaced the stones in Jason’s magic room. The shuddering feeling returned. I could hear Bruce again as clearly as if he was standing behind me: “With magic, there is always a price.” I had a flash—something in a mirror—red eyes reflected in a mirror.
I shook it off, changed quickly into the costume, and was in such a hurry to leave, I nearly bumped the suit of armor on my way out the door. That suit of armor—it’s so Jason. It makes sense after all, all the antiques. He is an immortal. That might even be his armor from all those centuries ago*.
Back on the street, I saw Lois standi ng next to Cu Ba, the Plaza doorman. She was waving to me frantically. She had found Poison Ivy.
“When I described her, Cu Ba pointed me right to her. But… Well, Selina, as soon as I saw, I figured I better wait for you to collect her.”
“You mean you waited for the whip,” I said.
“No. You’ll see.”
Batman ran through the fog-laden park, the lenses in his cowl affording him some visibility. Finding the source of the chaos—and Superman—was not very difficult; just follow the noise. There were blasts like cannon shots resounding through the park.
Batman approached the scene and immediately summed up the situation: Superman was standing in front of a pile of human bodies—unconscious berserkers—as what could only be described as a horde of stone gargoyles closed in around them. Any time a gargoyle got too close, Superman blasted it with a well-placed punch, shattering it to pieces in a loud explosion of force. He followed the punch with a blast of Superbreath, sending the shattered pieces sailing backward away from the bodies. Batman realized the necessity for the blast of breath as the pieces reconstituted into complete gargoyles mere seconds after they shattered.
It was a standoff—the gargoyles slowly circled the mass of bodies, their stone eyes never leaving the brightly-clad protector. Superman watched them all intently, blasting any gargoyle that crossed his invisible boundary line. Several of the gargoyles attempted to rush in at once, but were instantly shattered in a blur of motion as Superman flew around the bodies in a circle at lightning speed.
Sensing the stalemate, Batman rushed toward the scene, scouting out the weakest point in the gargoyle circle where only one monster stood between him and the Man of Steel. He leapt into the air, planting a foot in the center of the gargoyle’s back and sending the stone fiend tumbling forward to the ground. As soon as they landed, Batman sprung forward, flipping in midair and landing expertly at Superman’s side.
Instinctively, The World’s Finest heroes stood back to back in defensive stances, their eyes trained on the circle of foes. Superman turned his head slightly, speaking back over his shoulder to his compatriot.
“Glad you could make it.”
“Details,” was the Dark Knight’s only reply.
Superman quickly and concisely explained the situation to Batman—Janus, the unconscious berserkers at their feet, the mass of other berserkers he had already moved away from the battlefield, the battle with the gargoyles—pausing only momentarily to dispatch any gargoyle that moved in too close.
“Any idea of the cause?” Superman asked as he finished his report.
“Poison Ivy,” Batman growled as he tossed an acid vial at a gargoyle coming in on his side. The vial exploded into the monster’s thigh and immediately began eating through the stone. With its next step, the gargoyle toppled over as its leg suddenly broke away.
“Ivy?” Superman asked curiously, blasting another gargoyle and blowing the pieces away. “I didn’t know she used magic…”
“She doesn’t,” Batman replied disgustedly. “She was dabbling in things she had no experience with and this is the unintended result.”
“So how do we shut it down? How do we send these things back to where they came from?”
“I’ve got…” Batman paused, realizing that telling Clark that his wife was currently working along side Catwoman and the proprietor of The Curiosity Shop to conjure up a solution was not exactly the best of ideas. “… people working on that now.”
I should have expected this. Pammy was having a Really Bad Day. She’d want to be with plantlife. The park was a fogged-in Hellmouth overrun with Berserkers. So the nearest patch of greenery was the Plaza Hotel’s Palm Court. Lois took me inside and pointed her out to me. I took a seat beside her, remembering her stunt at the Highland Games, remembering what she did when it all went sour. I really should have seen this coming.
“You’ve been sucking down cosmopolitans,” I said. It wasn’t a question, but she confirmed it anyway.
“Couple,” she hiccupped.
That’s: Poison Ivy + Really Bad Day + the nearest patch of flora serves alcohol. Some days, Gotham can’t catch a break.
Gaia’s Chosen snapped her fingers high in the air and pointed down to the tabletop. One of the giant palms for which the room is named bent down across my shoulder, holding a pitcher of pink liquid in its leafy fronds. It topped off her glass and then hovered, waiting, as some kind of creeping ivy snaked out of its planter. The vine crawled across my lap and deposited a chilled glass on the table in front of me, and the hovering palm poured from the pitcher.
“Unless you want a murtinni,” Pam slurred hospitably.
I let my head tip forward until the bridge of my nose could rest between my fingers and massaged. Ivy’s biochemistry is such that she is completely immune to poisons—meaning it should be physically impossible for her to get drunk. The catch is that she can control it; she can let alcohol affect her if she chooses. On a Really Bad Day she chooses to. Who wouldn’t?
What I didn’t know was if, having decided to let herself get snookered in the first place, could she then switch it off or did she have to sober up the regular way like anybody else. I decided the best way to find out was to push her and see what happened.
“Nope, no time for a quick one,” I said, standing. “But I’m glad you’ve had your share because liquid courage is better than none. We’re going into the park, Pammy. You’re going to help us summon Hel-Blostiban.”
She gave me the same look Nutmeg does when I get out the cat carrier. Like I can’t possibly be suggesting that she get into it and let herself be taken back to that vet with the long needles.
“You can’t possibly be suggesting—”
“No. I’m not. Because that would be a conversation, and this isn’t one. We are going in there and you’re coming. And the reason I know that, Pamela, is because you don’t have any choice here. I know I don’t need to remind you: you got into this because you fight like a girl. So you can either get your ass off that chair and come with us willingly, or you can follow your hair.”
I have to assume the reason I didn’t smell a cloud of lemon pledge at this announcement was that either all the cosmopolitans had short-circuited her pheromones, or else the comparatively mild scent of lemon couldn’t punch through the fourteen layers of herb oils Miriam had me coated in.
It turns out the prospect of being taken back into a park full of rampaging Berserkers will sober Ivy up very nicely, thank you. She snapped into full goddess mode the minute we stepped outside. It was the sight of that fog wall that did it. Coming through the revolving door, she saw it there: black, opaque, and twenty-feet high, right where the edge of the park should be. She stopped dead in her tracks. Lois was still pushing through the door behind her, her arms full of Mi riam’s ritual-supplies. She careened right into Pam’s back, pushing her forward towards the park and setting off full goddess-mode.
“No, no, nonononono, I am NOT going back in there. I am going to repeat that, because it bears repeating: I –shall– –not– set foot in that park again until it has been cleansed of all the—”
“—of all the Hell lords and rampaging Berserkers that you unleashed? Yes, Pammy, you will. You’re going back in. And your new pets can come.” I added the last because the trees and vines from the Palm Court were now pouring out of the revolving door behind Lois, undoubtedly summoned by Ivy once she sobered up enough to realize what I was prepared to make her do.
“And before you bother having the shrubbery grab us, I’ll tell you right now that it won’t do you a bit of good. You’re going to help us, Pamela, not because I can kick your ass, although I can and I will—but because you conjured that stuff in the first place. You summoned Janus because he has two faces and you couldn’t keep your mind off Harvey. And if you don’t want Harvey to know that, you’re going to have to make me happy. Clear? Good. The trees can help Lois carry the ritual supplies.”
“We’ve got to get these people out of here!” Superman landed in his spot at Batman’s back after dispatching another round of gargoyles. He was starting to feel the pointlessness of their guardian mission.
“I agree,” Batman grunted, flinging another acid vial. “Remove their target.”
“I came up with an idea to get them all out in one move, but I couldn’t risk leaving them unattended for a few seconds. Can you hold the line long enough for me to…”
“Go!” Batman instructed.
That was all that was needed. Had it been a League mission, plans would be arranged and in-field strategies would be formulated. But this was just the two of them and Superman knew… Clark knew… that no matter what, Bruce would keep the civilians safe long enough for Superman to carry out his plan.
Superman launched himself into the air and spun around, instantly blasting the ground in between the gargoyles and the unconscious berserkers with a high-intensity blast of his heat vision.
The instant Superman had left the ground, the gargoyles began moving in. Batman reached under his cape and pulled out his second grapnel gun, aiming it through the crowd of stone monsters directly at the hulking figure of Janus. He didn’t fire—he’d never planned to. Merely the sight of the line-firing device in Batman’s hand had garnered the reaction he was looking for. Several of the gargoyles became highly agitated at the sight of it—just as the Blostiban gargoyle had. Batman knew he’d used several of these gargoyles, perched in their immovable positions on the rooftops across Gotham’s skyline, as swinging points on many a night.
The enraged gargoyles started knocking aside the others to get at the dark-covered man. No longer concerned about Janus’s instructions, they now had one sole purpose: revenge. Revenge on the Dark One. O he of the pinching metal claws and the hard swinging cords.
General chaos erupted through the ranks as those that were shoved took obvious exception to the shoving and shoved back. It didn’t take long for Janus to realize what was happening. He increased the level of his chanting, snapping the gargoyles back into line and onto the appropriate targets. But it had taken long enough.
Within seconds, Superman had carved a ten-foot wide, ten-foot deep circular trench in the ground around the pile of bodies. Some of the gargoyles had been standing a little too close and suddenly found themselves tumbling into the trench. Superman dove into the trench, flying around the length of it twice, blasting those unfortunate few, then immediately turned in and burrowed through to the central point of the “island” he’d just created.
The ground began to tremble under Batman’s feet and he instantly realized Superman’s plan. The “island” slowly began to rise as Superman pushed up from below, lifting the entire mass of land slowly into the air. Janus realized it too, as he began barking orders at the gargoyles to stop them.
The gargoyles, though large and obviously powerful, were not built for agility. Several attempted to leap the distance to the slowly rising island but fell short and tumbled into the trench—now a ten-foot deep pit—instead. Just as Superman thought they were in the clear, one of the gargoyles leapt up, using one of his companions back as a step and managed to grab the edge of the island. The whole land mass tilted suddenly with the added weight. Superman was able to correct the tilt almost immediately, but several of the unconscious bodies shifted dangerously close to the edge.
Batman leapt forward and grabbed the sliding bodies, managing to keep them from falling off. The gargoyle kicked its legs violently in the air, trying to crawl up and over the edge of the island. Seeing the gargoyle’s climb and realizing that there were only fifteen feet or so off the ground, Batman leapt over the side, planting both feet squarely on the monster’s head and sending them both tumbling toward the ground.
As they fell, Batman curled his legs and sprung off the monster’s head, gaining little leverage in free fall, but just enough to use his cape to sail over the throng of gargoyles below. He landed hard on the ground, ducking into a roll and immediately springing back to his feet a few yards behind the gargoyles.
“Batman!” Superman called out after witnessing the display. He had no intention of leaving his friend behind to deal with a hundred agitated gargoyles.
But Batman left no room for debate as he shot an intense glare up at the rising landmass and the comparatively small figure underneath it.
“GO!”
Ivy’s entourage of palm trees and vines from the Plaza did come in handy as we made our way to the clearing. Berserkers are strong and quite stubborn, even when faced with the business end of a cat-o-nine tails. The greenery would hold them back while I knocked them out… while I tried to knock them out would be more accurate.
The first one to approach the clearing: we heard him coming. These guys might be strong, but they’re not subtle or cunning. The crunch-clomping as he approached sounded like Croc trudging through the Iceberg after last call. I was poised to attack as soon as he came off the path—caught him in the neck—drugged claws—should put a man out in seconds. Except it didn’t. It was a minute before he even slowed down. But the vines came through—they tangled through his legs, tripping him very neatly, and a well-placed kick took him the rest of the way down. One of the palms threw itself across his body and the vines quickly coiled around, tying him to the trunk. This guy just might have been strong enough to throw a tree aside if it was blocking his way, but he wasn’t nearly coordinated enough to maneuver while strapped to one. I punched him again—again—again—and finally his eyes rolled and he went limp.
So the plants were more helpful than either Pam or Lois, in that respect.
While the rainforest kickline helped me keep the clearing free of Berserkers, Pam helped Lois set up for the ritual. I got the best of that deal, believe me. Four feet of coiled vine was the only thing keeping a crazed woman from slashing my throat open with the blades of her rented ice skates and I had the best of the deal.
Miriam had said Hel wouldn’t answer the summons if she was with us. So she gave us everything we would need to call the goddess ourselves, along with a very explicit set of written instructions. Pammy took one look at the handwriting and got hysterical. Lois had to slap her. I heard it all playing out behind me while I clawed a viciously strong gardener trying to pull my arms off:
“Bun lady! NO! No bun lady to-do list. Bun lady is bad.”
Underneath that baseline, I heard Lois muttering: “Thank God I didn’t bring Jimmy. Last thing I need. Picture of me wearing the mask of Homenoptok, juggling candles and whacking Poison Ivy with an anointed shrub.”
“Bad things come from bun lady list!” “Can just see the headline: Pulitzer Prizer Pummels Plant Lady!” “No candles! No chanting! No list, nolist, nolist!”
And Lois slapped her.
It was probably a bad move under any circumstances, but right now…
This all started for Pammy at the Iceberg. This all started with a catfight. Now, Lois slapped her face and BINGO, Pammy must have flashed right back to that moment with Roxy. She let out a howling screech that even berserking-gardener turned to look at. That part was lucky and I swung the whip handle left across his throat, right across his temple, then down over his head once he doubled over. The drugged claws had finally dispatched demented ice-skater-woman, freeing me up to help Lois. Although I had no idea how.
Diverting Poison Ivy’s attention from herself for ten blessed seconds is not something I’d ever seen done, let alone attempted personally. The plants that were helping me against the Berserkers were starting to weaken from the lack of sunlight, and I was beginning to realize that we wouldn’t get very far with the ritual if I had to stop every few minutes to beat off another attack.
At that moment, a hero arrived to save the day. I don’t have the “Look up in the sky!” admiration for Superman that most do, but I don’t shrink from admitting his arrival at that moment saved the day. As I said, it is no mean feat pulling Ivy’s attention away from herself, but a great big mass of blue, white, and red swooshing through the sky with a large slab of land, that got a looksee. The arms and heads of what one could only hope were unconscious berserkers dangling over the edge of the flying landmass, that got even Queen Chlorophyll to stop and focus.
He obviously noticed us too, because he doubled back as soon as he’d taken those bodies wherever they were going.
::Batman?::
::… Go ahead::
::Who exactly were those “people” you had working on the problem?::
::…::
::Batman?!::
::Little busy here.::
-Line secured-
::Bruce, what is my wife doing in the park with Catwoman and Poison Ivy?!?::
::-grunt- Hopefully, reversing Ivy’s spell…::
::…::
::…::
::…::
With a Man of Steel hovering nearby, I figured it was safe to focus on the ritual. I took my place, sitting on the ground between Pam and Lois. We joined hands around the gemstones, just like at Miriam’s, forming a circle around the arrangement of incense, candles, and runestones.
I began the invocation Miriam wrote out for us&helli p;
To the focus of my spirit
the nexus of my thought
I summon Hella of Nifelheim…
The sound of a stone on stone collision resounded across the field as Batman launched off of one gargoyle’s shoulders, sending it careening into another one. He knew that trying to take these things on was suicide, so he was simply dodging and avoiding them as much as possible while he made his way closer and closer to Janus. The only way to stop these things was at the source.
As Batman neared, Janus called to him in a tone that sounded half like a deep, guttural voice and half like the barking of a large dog. “You and that other mortal may have moved my claim farther away, but rest assured, they shall be mine.”
Batman dodged another clubbing blow from an approaching gargoyle and lithely slid between two others. He could hear the chanting now, low and droning, coming from behind Janus. He realized—as Superman had before—that the chanting was coming from Janus’s second face in the back.
The front face continued its taunting. “And you will make the perfect genesis, Dark One. The grandest soldier to lead the… NO!!”
All of the gargoyles stopped their assault at once and immediately turned to their master. However, Janus’s attention was not on them, nor was it on the “Dark One” quickly approaching. His eyes squinted slightly as he scanned a great distance, trying to focus on the waves of magic that he suddenly felt shuddering through the park.
“Meddling bitches!” the demon howled. Quite similar to the tone Blostiban had used when she had mentally screamed the same words, Batman realized with a small smirk.
Janus began snorting, barking and grunting at the gargoyles, which Batman surmised to be some sort of strange language. All of the gargoyles immediately turned and started running off in the same direction Superman had gone only moments before. Flapping his massive wings, Janus rose into the air and began to follow them from above.
Batman pulled his grapnel gun again and fired, the line wrapping around Janus’s taloned foot. Either the demon didn’t notice or was too intent on this new problem to care. Batman’s shoulder almost dislocated as he was yanked off of the ground, sailing along behind the fast-moving demon. He barked a quick order and the Comm Unit reengaged.
::Superman. They’re headed your way.::
I summon Hella of Nifelheim, Daughter of Loki,
Sister of the Wolf and World Serpent, Guardian of the Fifth Circle
I summon—
Perhaps I should explain why I don’t share the rest of the world’s wide-eyed “Look, up in the sky!” opinion of Superman. It isn’t because the one time I pulled a job in Metropolis, I found I could play him like a three-dollar fiddle. It isn’t because when Prometheus attacked the Watchtower, he had Superman sitting quietly in the corner like a good dog while he beat the shit out of Batman. It isn’t even because he sent his wife into the powder room to find out when I was going to let Bruce put a collar on my neck.
It’s stuff like this. I was trying to concentrate ‘the focus of my spirit’ on Hella and our entreaty to join us for a sisterly sitdown. While I’m trying to concentrate, Earth’s greatest hero decides to whip up a protective cyclone to hold back any marauding threats. You try focusing your spirit with a guy in a bright red cape buzzing around your head at subatomic speed.
If our message to Hella was anything other than what it was, we would have been totally screwed. But as it turned out, annoyance at Superman—or more likely Lois’s annoyanc e at her husband—proved to be just the thing. The same suffocating clamminess we felt at Miriam’s seemed to descend on our circle. The fog congealed around us, right inside the eye of SuperCyclone.
Then it solidified at the very center of the circle, and took on the womanly shape in which we saw her last. I was glad of that; I wasn’t sure how stable Pammy was at the moment or if she could handle the gargoyle form.
˜˜It is not for mortals to summon me,˜˜ Hella said in our minds. I could practically feel Ivy freaking beside me, so I decided to step in.
“Um, excuse me,” I addressed the calmer goddess. “Could you not do that? I mean, could you possibly talk the regular way we do north of the underworld, by making sound? The head-chatter is a little unsettling, and she’s holding on by a thread as it is.”
Ivy squeezed my hand so hard I damn near dropped the tiger eye, but Hella nodded. When she spoke, it was a cold, dead voice, but it was a voice-voice, coming from her mouth and sounding in our ears rather than in our brains.
“What is so pressing,” she said very slowly, “that it could not wait until thou, like all mortal flesh, enter my realm?”
Batman hit the ground hard and released the grapnel as Janus swooped in toward a massive cyclone in the middle of the park. It was obviously where the women had set up shop because the gargoyles had already started circling around the tornado. Clark was running defense.
Janus landed behind the gargoyles, the chanting from his backward facing mouth getting louder. Batman couldn’t hear what was being said inside the massive funnel, but he doubted he would have been able to over Janus’s chanting/snarling combination anyway. He could barely make out several shapes in the center of Superman’s defense—but there appeared to be four figures inside.
The moment was here. Lois was looking at me like it was my show and mine alone. I took a deep breath.
“We think you should reconsider letting Janus go through with this,” I said gamely. “Six thousand Berserkers is a pretty big gift no matter what, but Hella, honey, letting him right your wrong for you?”
Before Hella could reply, Ivy snapped to attention.
“THAT’s what’s going on. You’re letting a man right your—”
“Technically a god,” Lois corrected.
“A mangod,” Ivy insisted. “What are you thinking, girl?”
“Do you have any idea what they’re like if you let them help? I mean, look at this self-appointed Lois-protector flying around our heads right now. Do you think she asked for this kind of interference when we wanted to ask you here for some private girltalk?”
“He is listening in, you know,” Lois added acidly.
Hella looked up at the horizontal streaks of blue and red clearly visible within the cyclone.
“Yes,” she confirmed. “He is listening as if it concerns him. Because it involves thee…” She turned to Lois. “…because it involves thee, he thinks it concerns him. Outrageous.” Then she turned slowly to the left and seemed to peer intently through the wall of the cyclone. “And the other. He watches. This concerns thee not, Dark Mortal.”
“Oh, good luck with that,” I told her. “You just try getting Batman to back off something because it’s none of his business.”
Ivy snorted her agreement.
᠉ 7;
Frustrated that he couldn’t tell what was going on and realizing that Superman couldn’t relay the information without potentially being heard by the people inside—or worse, outside—the cyclone, Batman decided to refocus his efforts on Janus. Several of the gargoyles had been smashed getting too close to the cyclone, but immediately reassembled a few steps back.
The chanting. Janus’s chanting was keeping them going. Batman sprinted up behind Janus, meeting the demon’s backward facing gaze with a glare of his own, and flung a smoke bomb toward the thing’s massive maw.
Janus managed to move his head just enough to avoid swallowing the projectile, but the vial smashed against his rear forehead, smoke instantly surrounding his head. He spun violently, smacking Batman with the back of his massive hand and sending the Dark Knight hurling backward.
“This concerns you no more, Dark One!” Janus’s front mouth bellowed as he swatted the smoke away from his faces. Batman landed in a roll, then immediately sprung back into action. The smoke bomb hadn’t hit its intended target, but the smoke had obviously provided Batman with another opening. The rear eyes were clamped shut now, still fighting the effects of the stinging smoke. Janus could no longer see Batman approaching.
As he bolted toward the demon’s back, Batman reached up, disconnected the cape from his suit and brought the whole cape in front of him—holding it by both ends. He leapt up, planting one foot on the base of Janus’s tail and the other directly between where the demon’s wings connected to its back. Continuing his momentum, he thrust the middle of the cape across the chanting mouth, looped his hands and the ends of the cape around the front and pulled back, effectively gagging both mouths at once.
Janus howled behind the gags, twisting and swatting violently at the gnat on his back with arms and wings. Batman, both feet now firmly placed between the monstrous wings, reared back on the cape ends like a stagecoach driver trying to stop an out-of-control team of horses.
The demon thrashed around, unable to reach Batman and screamed a muffled scream of rage.
“And then comes the pouty anger,” Ivy said.
“Or the puppy dog eyes,” Lois amended.
“Or the brooding,” I added.
“Because you don’t want to do it his way.”
“After all he’s done for you.”
“When his way is so much better.”
“You’re just being stubborn”
“Hormonal”
“Willful.”
“Like he’s doing you a big favor letting you put the TV on after sex to drown out the frightfully inorganic city sounds that make it impossible to get to sleep.”
“Um, Pammy.”
“Just because the Home-Garden channel is on 15 and isn’t divisible by two.”
“Ivy, stop.”
“Because that sure didn’t matter when Penetrator II or Good Will Humping were on Channel 93.”
“Ivy, I’m begging you. More information than is needed or wanted. Please stop.”
“Good… Will… Humping?” Hella asked.
“Never mind,” I told her. “You don’t want to know. Where were we?” I looked to Lois who chimed right in with the next item on the agenda.
“Ego. Vanity and Ego. You would not believe how long a straight man can stand in front of a mirror and preen until you’re standing there yourself and see it, waiting for a zipup.”
“Right,” I f ollowed up, “You look good in an $8,000 suit. Congratulations, darling, now you want to move over so I can get to my earrings.”
“And hair products, who knew they can get so attached to ZIRH that it’s a cosmic crisis if the hotel sundry shop only has Suave.”
I glanced up at the SuperCyclone and stifled a grin. Added to the surprising discoveries made since entering Bruce’s world: that natural spit curl wasn’t so “natural.”
In the walls of the spinning vortex, the noise was tremendous. The rushing wind was distorting all of the surrounding sound, making recognition of the things said inside the protective center impossible—at least, that’s what Clark was telling himself. There was no way he was hearing what he thought he was hearing…
He was pushing himself to the limit of his speed, blocking the four women from the onslaught of a hundred rampaging stone gargoyles, selflessly putting his life in harm’s way to protect them… there was no way that they were sitting around having a First Wives Club-style girl-chat—especially one about him and Bruce!
Speaking of Bruce, what in Rao’s name was going on outside? Bruce appeared to be riding around on the flailing Janus like some demented rodeo cowboy…
Then it hit him. Bruce was distracting the demon, preventing him from keeping the chant going. Superman forged ahead stronger, widening the berth of the tornado. He started slowly blasting through the ranks of the gargoyles, pleasantly surprised when they didn’t start rematerializing as he went. If he could just keep the cyclone under control…
“Of course it’s all about control,” Lois was saying. “That’s why he won’t label a VHS tape or a computer disk and just lets them all sit there looking identical. You can’t straighten up the room because he has ‘a system’. He knows what they are that way. Whereas if he’d just write on the label so anybody that can read will know what’s on the damn thing, then you could put it away.”
I sighed. I couldn’t help her out on this new topic. Bruce was a labeler. He won’t let me near a disk until it’s been catalogued, backed up, affixed with a printed label, and filed appropriately. And if, God forbid, something gets put back wrong! You think traipsing off with the museum’s Monet is a big deal? “Why are ‘03May Police Reports’ in front of ‘03May Police Feeds’?”
Naturally I couldn’t say that. Here we were trying to point out what stubborn, inflexible, controlling jackasses men can be, and because Ivy was with us, I couldn’t mention Bruce. Other men might hog the remote, Bruce has an emergency override in his watch. And I couldn’t say a word.
I guess I could have complained about the Fop, but Ivy’s presence was a hindrance there too. Not so much because of his identity, but because of my own pride. What could I say? That his women were accessories? Black tie affair: the Armani tux, DKNY cummerbund, the Bentley, and you. Just another ornament, bought and paid for—in this case, for the bargain price of six thousand berserkers.
Actually 5,999 because the Dark Mortal is taken, Honey.
And I couldn’t say any of it.
The corded muscles in Batman’s arms strained as he continued pulling back. Janus was snarling now, trying to gnaw through the cape. Thankfully, the Kevlar mesh was holding, but Batman didn’t know for how much longer.
He managed a quick glance to see that the vortex was wide ning, taking out the first row of gargoyles. Without the chanting from Janus, the gargoyles had stopped rematerializing after being destroyed and, instead, the dust and debris was getting sucked up into the spiraling winds and scattered across the park.
Batman held on tightly, wrapping the ends of the cape around his hands for a better grip. He bent his legs slightly, trying to keep himself in line with Janus’s center of gravity as the demon bucked and thrashed. But it was getting more and more difficult as Janus’s movements got more and more erratic.
Whatever the women were doing inside the protective cyclone, he silently implored them to do it quickly.
As our talk went on, I began to see Ivy’s inclusion as more of a blessing than a curse. Because she was with us, there were a great many things I hadn’t said—thank God! As it was, without knowing anything of the real particulars about my relationship with Bruce, Ivy had declared me—
“Bat-whipped.”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, give it up, Catty, you’re bat-whipped. From day one, you let him get under your fur.”
I was speechless. All I could think was: It will be a small private service, plants and family only.
“Now that’s true, Selina,” Lois chimed in. “That time you took me hostage in Metropolis. The second he showed up with Superman, your focus changed entirely, it was all about him.”
A small private double service…
This couldn’t be happening.
“Oh, like you’re in a position to talk,” Ivy turned on Lois.
I am not bat-whipped, okay? The whatever-it-is between Catwoman and Batman… is. It’s always been. And I have always managed to keep it in its proper place in relation to everything else in my life. If I had the choice of falling for someone that wasn’t quite so much an overbearing control freak, would I? Well… …No, probably not. Because he wouldn’t be Bruce if he was easygoing and accommodating and—and—and you don’t GET that choice anyway—which Pammy should know better than anybody.
“Pamela,” I found my tongue once the shock wore off, “May I remind you that you CONJURED JANUS because you COULDN’T GET YOUR MIND OFF TWO-FACE!”
I turned to Hella.
“That’s what we’re up against here, Hella. That’s what they do. You give them just the tiniest opening, you let them in THAT much, look how they take over. Pammy, help me out here, vegetation example.”
“I am over Harvey Dent,” she declared.
“What’s the big tree in south Florida,” Lois asked, “with the roots all over sucking up the aquifer?”
We all looked at her—even Hella.
“You wanted a plant metaphor for how men infiltrate and take over?”
“Kudzu,” Ivy said happily. “Men are like the kudzu vine. Grows over everything, trees, power poles, everything. Sixty feet a year. Japanese brought it in for an exhibition in 1876, now it covers seven million acres of the Southeastern United States. Can’t stop it. Herbicides, best ones, take ten years of repeated treatments.”
“See, there you go, men are kudzu.” I figured I better bring us back to the point before Pammy got carried away.
“And that’s just human men,” Lois added, “Can you imagine what an infernal-testosterone case like Janus could be like if you let him get away with this? He’ll turn Nifilheim into his den!”
“He’ll start ordering you around like it’s Taming of the Shrew,” I said.
Hella looked again in the direction she had before, as if peering farther into the distance than any of us could see.
“Too little payment for so great a debt,” I quoted.
Hella stepped out from the center of our circle in the direction she was staring. I broke the circle and stood, moving behind her. I’d finally worked out how to frame the thought that was gnawing at me.
“When you get right down to it,” I told her quietly, “He’s giving you a whole lot of nothing-really-useful-anymore. Ragnarok is over. You lost. What are you going to do with six thousand berserkers now? It’s not about you anymore; it’s about him. It’s about him getting them for you. And I don’t think it’s a sweet ‘Honey, look what I did’, either. I think it’s a cage. I think it’s putting us in a box like a thing, something owned, their personal property. They don’t have to think about it or worry about it, it’s just there, waiting, right where it should be next to the Nintendo. And you realize one day that all of the party announcements are for ‘Mr. Janus & Guest’—not that there’s any question who he’s going to be bringing because you’re a foregone conclusion.”
She turned to me but didn’t speak. Instead I heard that eerie mind-voice once again: ˜˜Like an accessory. Bought and paid for. For the bargain price of six thousand Berserkers?˜˜
I glared.
All the magic types do it. Why did I expect more consideration from an actual goddess.
“My private thoughts are private,” I told her bitterly.
˜˜Or 5,999. Because the Dark Mortal is taken.˜˜
“Peace, sisters,” she said aloud before disappearing through the wall of the protective cyclone. Then the mind-voice returned. ˜˜There is wisdom in thy counsel; I thank thee for thy pains.˜˜
At first, I didn’t realize we all heard the last statement. Not until Ivy started sputtering. First she made a gasping hiss, like those big steam presses at the dry cleaners, then she began the slow ramp up to Leaf Bitch with a grievance: Hella, Roxy, Kazaa, Men-Men-Men, bartender at the Palm Court, Bun Lady…
She had held on pretty well, all things considered. At least, that was my take. Lois wasn’t so generous. Either that or she thought the ramp up to Leaf Bitch might be Ivy succumbing to the enchantment and turning full-blown Berserker on us. (Harvey has never, to my knowledge, seen a real Berserker in action, but I’m sure he would back me up that it’s an easy mistake to make. He would have loved what happened next.)
Lois tapped Ivy sweetly on the shoulder, and as Ivy turned, Lois socked her square in the jaw. There’s something poetic about a one-punch knockout, even if it does send the punchee flailing back onto the ritual cloth… overturning the anointed gourd, scattering the sacred gems, kicking over the herbal candles and setting the ritual cloth on fire.
The lines of magic shift and phase simultaneously through our world and a thousand other planes of existence. There is an elegant simplicity to the patterns they weave, linking time-space with other realities.
After a few decades practicing the magickal arts, a seasoned practitioner like Miriam Nash will learn to sense if those patterns shift or falter from some disturbance. But even an experienced witch like Miriam will seldom know the nature of the disturbance. The sense comes naturally from years channeling the magickal force, but learning to interpret it can take many lifetimes.
Still, as she tidied the backroom at the Curiosity Shop, Miriam tried to make sense of what she was experiencing. Ever since the tumult in the park began, there had been concentrated waves of disturbance. It was like a neighbor blasting a stereo. The magickal plane was in turmoil, but by now she was becoming accustomed to the constant din. She tried to “listen” for anything familiar. Selina and Lois were using her incantation to summon Hella, and she would recognize the patterns of her own magicks. When they began, she felt it distinctly. It was as if, in the midst of the neighbor’s blasting stereo, in the bewildering din of hiphop, she could pick out the strains of a favorite Mozart concerto. They were calling Hella. That comfortable recognized rhythm of her own magick grew stronger when they got through. It quickened and glowed with triumph when another magick, presumably Hella’s, began reverberating in a complimentary cadence… not only had they made contact with the goddess of the underworld, they had convinced her.
What was once a simple clearing in Robinson Park now resembled a battlefield. Batman had positioned himself on Janus’s back between the wings, enraging the demon like an itch he couldn’t scratch, the reinforced cape tied like a gag across the demon’s twin mouths, silencing his chanting. Without Janus’s protective mantra, the gargoyles could not reform themselves as they came, one by one, too close to a great cyclone in the center of the action and were ripped into an explosive blast of debris.
The last gargoyles destroyed themselves with a desperate, futile lunge at the heart of the tempest… then a figure walked through the whirring wall of the twister with the casual air of one walking through a doorway. It was a woman, her body pink and alive from the waist up, dead and rotting from the waist down. She paused once she completely cleared the funnel, directing a quick sort of shrug towards the whirlwind behind her. To Batman, well-versed in reading body language, it seemed like amused acknowledgement for a favorite pet’s trick: oh look, the doggy is walking on his hind legs.
Superman, seeing that the gargoyles were no more, slowed then stopped his frenzied spiral and let the cyclone disperse. As he stopped, he noticed the small fire caused by Ivy’s sudden collapse (thanks, Lois) into the candles. A quick blast of Superbreath extinguished the flame before it could reach Ivy’s unconscious body. He returned his attention to the figure that had strolled untouched through his tornado.
The woman continued her slow but direct progress towards Janus. When she got close enough, Batman could see that half of her face was lovely, half ugly and misshapen. This, he knew from his research into Norse mythology, would be Hel, goddess of the underworld. When she reached Janus, her eyes flared red, looking like Superman’s when he used his heat vision. There was no beam or sense of warmth, but the cape incinerated, sending Batman tumbling backwards onto the ground behind Janus, as the demon cried “My own!” joyously from the mouth nearest Hella the moment it was freed.
“Your… what?” Hella inquired while Superman flew to Batman’s side. He was about to brief Batman on all he had heard going on inside the cyclone, but Batman held up a hand for silence and watched Hella intently. There was something about that tone, “Your… what?” It was familiar. “Cat stuff… You don’t have a lot of cat stuff around your apartment. I always figured you would.” “Well, this isn’t a hideout; this is my home.” Translation: You just said something wrong; you need to figure out what and fix it. Quickly.
“My own, my Hella, my beauteous one…”
“I am unaware, Janus, of when I became that which could be owned.”
“But my darling…”
Batman almost shook his head.
“What’s going on?” Superman whispered.
“My,” Batman murmured, barely audible from behind closed teeth. “She doesn’t like the possessive. He doesn’t get it. He keeps hammering away at it.”
The two heroes looked past Janus, still positioned closest to them… they looked to Hella, standing just in front of him on the other side… then beyond in a straight line behind her to the three women: Ivy—picking herself off the ground… Lois—keeping her eye on Superman… and Selina—her eye trained most definitely on Hella—who had finished the preamble and was now on a roll.
“…never needed thy help, never asked for thy help, and thou certainly, by Freja’s golden chariot, never stopped to consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, I never wanted thy infernal help.”
“But this is all for you, my eternal love. It is not ‘help’; it’s a gift! I was called to right the wrong, and there was no greater wrong than—”
“A gift. A GIFT? What manner of gift be six thousand Berserkers that became irrelevant at the Battle of Vigrid nine eons past? What manner of JACKASS would think I have need of warriors now? What purpose can there be in such a gift but to indebt the receiver—That is not only a low trick, it is an obvious and insulting one to the daughter of Loki, greatest Trickster of the seven realms!”
The women weren’t actually nodding along, but the air of satisfaction from the grouping behind Hella was unmistakable.
“I refuse thy ‘gift,’ Janus. No inducement will persuade me to accept the burden thou tries to heap upon me disguised as a love-token. Thou canst depart this sphere whenever thy may wish. Return to watching the lower beings of the Third Circle play that idiotic game with the porcine bladder, if thou so chooses.”
“But… but…”
“Or perhaps, instead of trying to impress me with misguided tokens of affection, thou couldst perhaps listen! As if any number of warriors—and, incidentally, the Dark Mortal is the only one among them that seems to have any ability beyond the Berserkund—as if any number of warriors could equal a little patience and understanding—”
“PATIENCE AND UNDERSTANDING?!? All I’ve ever shown you is patience! Infinite cursed patience and yet all you do is talk about how miserable you are! How lousy things have been for you since the fated day on the final fields!”
“If all I have done is given voice to my grief, it is because I have had precious else to speak of. The Yellow One at least pretended to care about my troubles.”
“Here we go.”
“He of the ochre-leather skin and eyes of infernal fire—”
“Infernal fire, my left wing! Etrigan is a vile insult to all trueborn sons of Hell! Bonded to a human pestilence by his own half-breed relation, he’s gone mad, I tell you. He’s gone native! He is a revolting affront to all that is ignoble in the netherworld—”
“Etrigan understood me!!!” Hella screamed, “Choosing thee over him was the worst mistake I ever made, thou — thou— thou—”
“Two-faced jerkwad!” Ivy prompted from behind.
Hella considered this. She had no idea what a ‘jerkwad’ might be, but it sounded right.
“Verily,” she pronounced, glaring at Janus.
“Well it’s too late now, Mistress!” Janus yelled. “‘Eternally bonded’, remember? I have done nothing but serve you since the beginning of time, and this is to be all the thanks I get?!”
Batman and Superman—or to be more accurate, Bruce and Clark—winced. For all the mortal-bashing these demonic invaders had done since their arrival, neither of the insignificant mortal insects would have stepped into that one. Behind Hella, the women’s reaction was immediate and unambiguous: See, there it is! ‘After all I’ve done for you’!
The ground began to tremble slightly, and again Hella’s eyes glowed red. “The mortal sisters were right about thee,” she declared with a withering stare. “Thou forgets thyself, Bifrons. The Roman mortals might have called thee Janus and thought thee a god—a minor god—of doorways. Heh. But we both know thy true nature and thy true stature. Legions of dark beings thy may command but I am not one of them. I am Hella of Nifelheim, and I declare—”
“You would pull rank on me—”
“I declare the Berserkergang released from their enchantment.”
“—on ME! You ungrateful slut!”
“I restore those gargoyles made in the image of the lower beings to their places on the buildings of the human city.”
“I want your obnoxious Midgarde knickknacks out of the Fifth Circle by the blood moon, or by Neron—”
“I restore life to this park that thy ill-conceived enchantments has razed so disgracefully.”
“That stupid Viking scrollwork on absolutely everything—”
With a wave of her hand, Hella of Nifelheim, goddess of the Underworld, opened a large swirling portal in the ground. She stepped into the center of its circle, mystical energy dancing across her feet, and turned back to Janus.
“And I will tell Etrigan what you said about him.”
“IMPOSSIBLE GODDESS!”
“Goodbye, Janus.”
“What just happened?” Superman whispered as soon as Hella’s form had dissipated and disappeared down into the swirling void of the portal.
“Hell hath no fury…” Batman responded, his eyes never leaving Janus for a moment. Around them, the black fog that had filled the park started swirling down into the void as well.
Clark turned to look at his friend for a moment and noticed that strange twitching at the side of Batman’s mouth. “Was that a joke?”
“Of course not,” Batman replied flatly. Before Superman could say anything else, Janus suddenly howled—millennia of frustration, anger and rage pouring out from both mouths simultaneously.
The demon wheeled on the three women standing amidst the scattered remains of the summoning circle.
“YOU!” Janus bellowed, stepping toward the trio. “You three are the cause of this!”
“36-B,” Batman grunted and both heroes sprung into action. Superman was instantly hovering in front of Janus, his arms folded sternly over his chest.
“It’s over, Janus. Time for you to go home.”
A derisive snort escaping his nostrils, Janus swatted at the interfering, brightly clad gnat. Superman could have easily deflected or dodged the blow, but instead, took it square in the chest and sailed up out of the park like a homerun ball headed for the upper deck. Janus’s swing hadn’t been that powerful and, in fact, Superman had to add a bit of power to his trajectory in order to clear the first row of buildings outside the park and disappear beyond the horizon of the cityscape.
The eyes in Janus’s rear face, still blurry from the smoke-bomb earlier, registered movement behind him and a second later, he felt something like a tap on his lower back, just above his tail. He’d barely registered the glass capsule exploding against his hide, but the acid began to eat through his skin like a swarm of burning maggots.
Howling again, Janus spun toward Batman, who was standing with his arms across his chest in much the same posture Superman had been in only moments before.
“Insufferable worm!” Janus snarled as he stepped back toward Batman.
“Three.”
Janus hadn’t even heard the word as he stomped closer, his giant maw snapping violently.
“Two.”
A faint sound rolled across the sky—a light crack, followed by a low rumble that sounded like distant thunder. A demon long-used to the continual dull roar of the Underworld’s eternal fires, Janus barely registered the noise.
Batman heard it and knew exactly what it was: Clark, breaking the sound barrier out over the Atlantic as he raced back toward the city. And the park.
“One.”
At the end of the countdown, just as Janus was swinging his massive taloned hand at the meddlesome mortal, Batman dropped to the ground and a giant red blur streaked in at incredible speed, right through where he had been standing. Superman planted both fists in Janus’s midsection and instantly rocketed him straight up into the air, not slowing down until they were in the upper part of the ionosphere.
“Show’s over,” Superman dictated, grabbing the surprised demon by his massive throat. “You lost. You want to throw a tantrum about it, fine.”
Superman spun the giant beast around and grabbed him by the base of his wings, tilting them both forward until they were hovering parallel, facing the ground several hundred miles below.
“But not on my planet!”
With a sudden burst of energy, they were in motion again, streaking back toward the surface. Janus squirmed, trying to release himself from the Man of Steel’s grip to no avail.
As they approached the ground, Superman caught sight of the mystical fog over Robinson Park, swirling around the portal like a miniature hurricane. He aimed for the center of the funnel, pressing harder, increasing speed.
At the last possible second, Superman released his grip and looped up skyward as Janus tumbled, howling in rage, into the portal. By the time Superman had slowed his momentum and returned to the park, the last of the fog sucked down into the portal and the magical gate closed itself.
Batman was just finishing a hurried conversation on the communicator in his cowl as Clark touched down beside him.
“Emergency crews are on their way to handle the civilians,” Batman explained.
“Well that was certainly… different,” Superman stated flatly. Batman grunted in the affirmative as Catwoman and Lois strolled nonchalantly up to them.
“You lost your cape, Handsome,” Catwoman purred teasingly. The tilt of her head as she eyed his upper body made it quite clear that she liked the look.
Batman grunted again, glancing back and forth between her and Lois. He glanced between them at the scattered remains of their summoning paraphernalia in the clearing behind them, noting the conspicuous absence of their third party member.
“That’s not all I lost .”
Considering the fact that all her beloved plantlife was inside the park, and all that awaited her outside were abandoned hansom cabs, concrete sidewalks, a row of hotels, and beyond that only the noise and suffocating congestion of midtown rush hour, the speed of Ivy’s exit would have shocked anyone who knew her. She had staggered awkwardly here and there as she reassessed the quickest path to the open air of Gotham, and only when she reached the promenade at the South Exit, clearing the boundary that was so recently a wall of black fog, did she pause to assume a more dignified carriage.
Comparatively dignified. There were limits, after a day like this, of what even a goddess could manage.
She needed somewhere to get away from all of this. Somewhere to relax. Somewhere quiet. Harley sometimes talked about a spa. Thoughtless girl, half of those places gave you “relaxation” by grinding up the rarest and dearest of her green babies into some kind of paste, then rubbing you down with the oozing guts squished out from poor defenseless plants. No, no, no. She couldn’t fight those battles now; she needed rest. She needed somewhere that she didn’t have to worry about bad magic, stupid men or even her suffering babies… somewhere safe…
“She’s where?” Batman growled in disgust.
“Arkham,” Superman replied. “Checked herself in, apparently.”
Batman grunted, staring from his perch on top of the Gotham Banking & Trust Building down into Robinson Park. The park was crawling with rescue crews, police, public works crewmen and a swarm of reporters. But it was the two large units of soldiers in Army fatigues carrying machine guns that held Batman’s attention. Superman followed his friend’s gaze to the closest cadre of soldiers standing guard at the southwest entrance to the park.
“National Guard?” the Man of Steel asked.
Batman confirmed. “Luthor’s asserting himself again. Sending ‘his boys’ into my city. Just to show me that he can.”
“Bruce, did you ever stop to consider that maybe the President’s intentions were altruistic?”
Bruce shot him a quick sideways glance, noting the barely contained smile creeping across Clark’s lips, then returned his attention to the park below. “Now who’s the one making jokes.”
There was a slight commotion on the fire escape. “Now just put your foot onto the ledge and give me your weight.” Selina’s voice. Then Lois’s, “My heel is stuck in the grate.” “I said not to put your weight down.” “I don’t see why I have to do this.” “You’re off the sidelines now, Lois. This is where the action is.”
One of the inherent benefits of working so closely together for so many years is a mutual understanding of the other’s thoughts. Bruce and Clark’s eyes met in a moment of silent, absolute communication bordering on telepathy, both agreeing that this would be the last time the “World’s Finest” team functioned as a quartet.
“Whatever happened to the idea of a Lo—damn, those were Italian—Preservation Society?” “You don’t need one. Maybe you can start one for Ivy.” “Man, what a high-strung prima donna she turned out to be.”
“Something we can do for you ladies?” Superman asked, assuming the crossed arms position in which he’d confronted Janus.
Catwoman ignored him and walked to the edge of the roof, peering into the park.
“National Gua rd?” she asked without turning her gaze.
“Yes,” Batman growled.
“Bastard,” she declared, “Just to show us he can.”
Superman looked very slowly from Catwoman back to Batman, who used virtually the same words seconds before. He tried to control the light smile threatening to spread across his face at this latest example of two people so perfectly matched.
Along with the ability to summon and cajole extra-planar beings, it seemed that Lois had somehow acquired a knack for reading minds. Because she suddenly elbowed her husband in the ribs, telling him silently to knock it off.
“So Luthor’s flexing his Commander-in-Chief muscles again,” Lois said, ignoring the ‘innocent’ stare from her husband as she strolled to the edge of the roof to look down at the scene below. “Is this really a surprise to any of us? He’s probably seeing to it right now that he gets credit for stopping this ‘threat to the American Public’s safety.’”
“Or finding a way to blame all of this on him,” Batman added, nodding in Clark’s direction.
“Yes, he’s been doing that more and more recently,” Clark agreed, already seeing the ‘Was Superman to Blame?’ headlines in his mind.
“I keep telling you it’s high time you took him down for good,” Lois chided, the distaste for all things Luthor apparent in her voice.
Superman bristled. “And I keep telling you that we cannot involve ourselves in the political affairs of this or any country…”
“Blah, blah, blah,” Lois dismissed him, not wanting to get into this argument all over again.
“It’s too late now,” Batman added with finality. “Any plan to oust Luthor from the Presidency would take years to plan and execute. By the time it was ready, he’d already be out of office.”
It was a lie, they all knew. Each of them knew, or at least suspected, that Batman already had a plan—probably more like six—to take Luthor down in ways that could never be traced back to anyone in the superhero community. Clark wouldn’t even be surprised if the groundwork was in place for a few of them already.
But Batman was in complete agreement with Superman on the issue. The second they crossed that line, the second they started taking action against the democratic decision of a free people—misguided or not—they stopped being Protectors and took that dangerous step toward Rulers. And that was a step that Batman would never allow. The message of Batman’s statement was clear: End of Discussion.
“At least everyone is safe and the crisis is over,” Superman announced, taking Batman’s cue and changing the subject back to the events of the day. He placed his hands on his wife’s shoulders, squeezing gently. “Though I’m still not entirely certain how…”
Lois turned, taking her husband’s hands in her own and tugging him toward the center of the roof. “C’mon, Smallville, I’ll explain it to you on the way back to the hotel. And don’t worry, I’ll use small words…”
Superman stared at her in mock disgust, then picked her up in his arms. He and Batman traded another silent look. They never said Thank You, they never patted each other on the back or commiserated over a job well done—it was never needed. They had done exactly what had needed to be done and that was that.
“Miss Lane,” Superman finally replied, “no need to dumb it down on my account.” With that, he took off into the sky, his wife in his arms, and disappeared over the cityscape.
“I’d give a lot to hear how she explains Good Will Humping,” S elina said once they were finally alone. Then she changed the subject abruptly back to the discussion Batman had declared at an end. “So you wait and let Luthor self-destruct.” It was Catwoman’s Rule #8: ‘Because he says so’ is not a reason to do/not do anything. Make sure he knows this. “He will self-destruct soon enough, I guess. All that hubris, he’s bound to trip over it sooner or later.” She glared down again at the National Guard troops. “But I really hope it’s sooner.”
Batman grunted and stared a moment more at the soldiers below, letting Selina’s words hang in the air. A familiar sting raced across his thigh—another returning scar—but he grunted that away as well. In the heat of battle, he’d pushed away the pain, drowning the returning wounds in a sea of adrenaline. Now that the fight was over, the pain returned but he managed to keep it mostly hidden.
He finally turned away from the park and looked directly at her. A strange, lengthy silence passed between them as he found his mouth trying to form the words. She had done a remarkable job today. He’d sent her off on a fact-finding mission, to discover what had happened and try to find a method to reverse it. In a sense, it was a simple expedient to get her away from the park, away from the battle, away from the danger. But not only had she found the information he’d been looking for, she’d rendered a solution, devised a plan and executed that plan to perfection.
Bruce knew that, although this wasn’t her normal milieu, there had been times in the past that she’d come through for him, for all of them. And she’d done it again today—she’d faced insurmountable odds, stared danger in the face and fixed a problem that wasn’t even her responsibility to fix. He wanted to thank her.
But Batman didn’t thank anybody. Not Nightwing. Not Oracle. Not any of his cohorts in the Justice League. Not even Clark. It just wasn’t done.
Selina watched him curiously for a moment, knowing the battle going on in his brain. She flashed her sly smile and sauntered up to him, pressing in dangerously close as her hand danced across the emblem on his chest.
“Don’t strain yourself, Stud,” she purred seductively. She playfully nipped his lower lip with her teeth, then turned and launched herself off the far end of the roof, her whip uncoiling as she went.
Batman peered over the roof, watching her lithe form twist and dance as she hopped from rooftop to fire escape. The twitchsmile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
Impossible woman.
He pulled the grapnel gun from his belt, turning instinctively toward the Grupnel building and taking aim. He froze and stared out across the barrel of the device, his eyes locking onto his target.
The gargoyle of Blostiban.
After a moment’s hesitation, he shifted the grapnel and fired, the metal claw gripping into the stone lip of the roof next to the gargoyle’s feet, and he swung out into the early evening air.
Martha Wayne used to call it the Sun Room. Large bay windows took up most of the eastern wall, affording a spectacular view of the east grounds and the woods beyond. As the morning sun peeked over the tops of the trees, the light would pour in through the windows and cast the entire room in a soft, warm glow.
Bruce sat motionless in the lotus position on a mat in the middle of the room. He always found the room to be the perfect meditation space. Though it seemed crammed in between the great library and the eastern dining room, the Sun Room somehow seemed detached from the rest of the manor—a silent, relaxing space.
He focused on the thin gentle lines of smoke flowing from a burning sti ck of incense.
The dark sandalwood scent filled his nostrils as he stared at the smoke line and tried not to notice the way smoke curled at the tip… tried not to notice it open into a spiral as it dispersed just like the void where Hella made her exit.
Magic. It was worse than feline logic.
Leave it to magic to re-fracture and re-herniate his vertebrae in the middle of a battle. A powerful sigh forced itself through the controlled exhale of his Ki breathing, decimating the thin slow line of smoke curling up from the incense. It reformed itself a moment later, right before Bruce’s eyes, and he glared at it with Batman’s most malevolent stare. What a metaphor. A few seconds’ disruption and all was set right again. That was magic’s attitude. No harm done. As if it was as simple as a few seconds’ paralysis.
He closed his eyes and took another deep breath, small beads of sweat collecting on his shoulders, rolling lazily down his naked back, zig-zagging over the scars and ridges, and finally getting soaked up by the waistband of his sweatpants. The morning sun danced across his back muscles as they twitched, another small cut opening across his left shoulder blade, then closing again in a perfectly formed scar. He exhaled slowly, clearing his mind of all other thoughts except the pattern of the returning scars. They were almost done, he knew now as he thought backward through the history of his wounds.
Another inhale brought a strange but familiar scent tingling into his nostrils. Lavender-Vanilla-Tearose.
“Good morning, Kitten,” he greeted without opening his eyes.
“Good morning, Handsome,” Selina replied softly. She watched him quietly, his whole body radiating in the glow of the room. She couldn’t help the small jolt in her own stomach as she saw a large cut suddenly open across his arm, then slowly close itself back up.
He’d finally relented the night before and told her about the returning scars. It couldn’t really be avoided with them sharing a bed—she’d seen the ones that had already come back the instant he took off his shirt. After making assurances that it would all be over soon, he’d kissed her gently and they’d gone to bed, the exhaustion of the day catching up to both of them. Bruce slept fitfully, the errant nature of the returning scars keeping him from getting more than a few minutes sleep at a time. He’d finally given up and come down to the Sun Room, hoping to meditate his way through the pain. It had mostly worked.
“You know, if you’d wanted a reason to not share a bed with me last night, you could have just said you ‘needed some space’ like a normal boyfriend and spared yourself all the magic mumbo-jumbo,” Selina teased lightly.
Bruce’s lip twitched in spite of himself. His eyes opened slowly, expecting to see her standing against the doorjamb, that teasing smile on her lips. She was standing in the doorway all right, but the smile was nowhere to be seen—in fact, her face showed an uncharacteristic concern, a twinge of worry creasing her brow. There was nothing either of them could do but wait it out, but she still couldn’t help the twisting in her gut about what he was going through.
His chest muscles spasmed lightly as four perfectly parallel lines suddenly opened across his chest, right where the Bat emblem normally rested. Fate, it seemed, was not without a sense of timing—his early Catwoman wound. He exhaled slowly as the cuts closed, his eyes locking onto hers without even a hint of malice behind them. In fact, his lip twitch turned into a full-fledged grin.
“Woof.”
Selina came forward and knelt in front of him, placing her fingers gently over the scratches as they closed back into the original scars.
“That’s better,” she murmured.
“Talk about possessive.”
Her eyes flicked up from the scars to his face.
“Marking your territory,” he noted dryly.
“Maybe a little. Mostly I was just thinking. All this that you’ve been going through…” her fingers stroked another scar absently as she said this, “…it makes me realize how… silly… I’ve been. Angsting over stupid little… self-indulgent… nothings.”
“Such as?”
“Feeling the cage door shut? I don’t know. It’s been…”
“It’s been all Clark’s fault.”
She looked up, confused by his sudden change of tone.
“When in doubt, blame the Alien. It works for the League,” he said.
Selina looked more confused than ever. He was almost… lighthearted. While she didn’t understand, she wasn’t going to mess with a good mood. She patted the restored cat-scratches playfully.
“Well, all over now anyway. Everything’s back as it should be.”
“If you say so,” Bruce agreed as she stood to go. Selina had just disappeared through the door when he brought a hand to his cheek and felt it ooze warm and wet as the first cat-scratch he ever received reappeared, and just as quickly dissolved.
“I told you so,” Lois reminded her husband sweetly. “I told you Bruce would wind up inviting us for something you didn’t pack for.” Clark decided not to notice that she said this in a halter top and wrap skirt he had never seen before.
“It was a surprise,” he admitted, rather than pointing out that she obviously hadn’t packed for a lunch cruise on their friend’s yacht either. It wasn’t like the invitation was foreseeable. It wasn’t like Bruce, a little getaway to recoup after the harrowing events of the previous day. In all the years they had worked together, Clark had never known Bruce to need (or at least to acknowledge the need for) reset time.
Clark regarded his friend shrewdly, then glanced through the deck and inner wall of the boat to read the words freshly stenciled on the hull. “La Gatta Mobile,” he mouthed. He looked again to Bruce, then back towards the side of the vessel.
From his position on the upper deck, Bruce watched his guests with a wry lip twitch, then headed down to the galley. Selina was unpacking the lunch basket and he moved behind her, placing his hands around her waist. She reacted to the interruption exactly as she would if she were cracking a Mattson safe instead of spooning jasmine rice onto poached salmon—as if it were no interruption at all and, of course, she knew he was there the whole time.
“Alfred’s idea of a picnic is very different from other people’s,” she noted.
“Mmhm,” he answered, burying his nose in her hair.
“I’m serious. Besides the salmon—with mustard-dill or red chili sauce depending on how daring your palette, there’s fruit here, green salad—with shallot vinaigrette…” she said, pulling out the bottle, “vegetable sushi, cashew-crusted chicken with honey mustard sauce, dinner rolls, butter pats, apple crisp for dessert and… after-dinner mints. Your butler is not human.”
“No. But one of our guests isn’t. Alfred is very fond of Clark, he’s never been certain about his appetite, and he likes to make sure.”
“Ah.”
“Speaking of,” the voice graveling so softly in Selina’s ear became deeper and softer still, “I hate to be the one to tell you, Kitten, but I think you can expect another tête-à-tête before they go.”
“Growl.”
“He looks at me, he looks at the boat, he looks at me again. I’d say you’re getting all the credit for this little outing.”
“Ivy should get the credit. It was all your scars coming back inside of a day that did it.”
“Let’s not tell him that.”
“Why not? He can send Lois up to Arkham to have ‘the talk’ with Ivy, Lois can slap her again in front of the surveillance cameras, Tim can set the whole thing to music and get himself into UCLA Film School, and I don’t have to talk to any of you ever again.”
“How did I get on that list?”
“You grunted in my hair.”
Back on deck, Clark stood with his arms wrapped in a similar stance around his wife’s waist as they looked out onto the sun glimmering off the water. He was strangely silent.
“You’re not listening in on them, I hope,” Lois chided.
“No, of course not,” he told her. “I was just… It is not ‘a cosmic crisis’ that the sundry shop didn’t have ZIRH. I could have zipped home for it if I wanted it that badly.”
“You could have zipped right down the block to Bloomingdale’s, Clark, but you didn’t. So what you wanted to do was exactly what you did. You came back to the room and yakked about it for ten minutes.”
“First meeting with my new publisher, I guess I was just a little nervous and needed something to hang it on. Was it that annoying?”
“Of course not, it’s adorable.”
“Of course not, it’s personal.”
“Selina, I am the only one that doesn’t know what was said inside that cyclone.”
“Tough.”
“The only one besides Janus; and I think I have a right to.”
“This concerns thee not, Dark Mortal.”
“Selina.”
“You’re going to have to do better than that if you want me to betray the sisterhood.”
“I named the boat for you.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“And thank you for letting me have the whole byline.”
“You’re welcome.”
“…”
“…”
“It really wouldn’t kill you to label those videos, you know.”
“I have never called you hormonal.”
“It was implied.”
“He doesn’t have to say it, a woman can tell.”
“Estrogen solidarity. Poor Clark.”
“The things you decide to fixate on, I swear to god, Bruce. Hormonal and puppy dog eyes? I’m going to be having nightmares for a month about Channel 93 and Good Will Humping.”
“Okay, now I’m going to have them too… Thanks.”
“So 93 is the porn channel?”
“That’s my guess.”
“And the divisible by 2 thing would be Dent.”
“One presumes. Certainly based on the ‘Two-faced jerkwad’ comment.”
“It will be good to get back home to Metropolis.”
“You said it.”
“I didn’t say I don’t appreciate his help. I’m glad he was here considering what we were up against. I just said it will be nice to—”
“Have them gone.”
“Get back to normal.”
Selina laughed.
“Normal? For Gotham? What’s that?”
“Two to a rooftop, gargoyles don’t move, and Ivy is the only one that—”
“—that smells like a spice rack. I know, I thought I got the last of that herb oil out of my hair, but that rosemary really clings—wait a minute. Did you just make a joke?”
“Of course not.”
Selina glared at the corner of his lip until it twitched.
“You might have a point. It will be good when they finally go home and everything can go back to normal.”
A mile or so up Gotham Harbor, a woman stood alone at the prow of a larger, much more ornate yacht. The harbor breeze twirled her dark hair as she stared through a set of high-powered binoculars at Bruce and Selina making their way out onto the deck of the Gatta.
“Make your time, Cat-witch,” she said softly. “For I am coming to take back that which is rightfully mine.”
A wide smile spread across the woman’s face as she lowered the binoculars.
“My Beloved.”
©2004, Chris Dee