Ha-Hacienda Three was quiet, save for the occasional pulsing giggle from one
of the hyenas. Harley Quinn lay draped over the passion pit, spread out on
the pillows, dressed in a ridiculously short goth-loli dress with
smiley-face pom-poms hanging from her pigtails, a huge pink ribbon tied
around her chest, and a red-lipped pout on her painted face.
He
wasn’t home yet!
Where was Puddin’? He
escaped hours ago, just like they planned! That stupid goober Driscoll was
spending probably his last hours on earth hysterically cackling at the
Arkham infirmary ceiling, all the incriminating evidence Mistah J had left
on the floor had led to Fatty Bob being fired and under investigation by the
cops for his involvement - the Joke had played out perfectly, and she was
waiting for her reward, because she helped, she really did, he
couldn’t have dunnit without her, and Mistah J damn well owed her a
wild night of rubber-chicken-honkin’ love and a nice cuddle afterwards and
maybe a movie and some flowers and -
And Harley was still
lying here alone all trussed up in a pink bow bored outta her brain and
MISTAH J WASN’T HOME!
It had to be Batman,
or the cops. He was caught up, giving them the slip, he’d be home any
minute. It couldn't be that he'd found something more entertaining to do
than be with her. It couldn't possibly.
HAAA
HA HA HA!!!!
The sound
broke through her thoughts. The doorbell. Finally.
“Come in, Puddin’…”
She purred in her very best Marilyn Monroe - much less squeaky and much more
breathy than her regular voice. “I’ve been a real naughty girl and I’m just
waitin’ for ya to fetch the rubber mallet and give me a good hard spa-”
The door
clicked open and a very different form staggered across the threshold,
sending Harley hopping up, eyes wide, Marilyn dissolving into the harlequin
squeak in an instant.
“RED!?”
Ivy pulled herself
into the Hacienda, eyes red-rimmed, looking downright atrocious. Her skin
really was alabaster now, but she didn’t look to be in any mood to
enjoy it. She didn’t even register Harley’s embarrassing attire, she just
took a few swaying steps into the room and collapsed into the passion pit
with a most un-Goddess-like grunt. Harley’s carefully-cultivated
environmental aroma of cotton-candy incense and bubblegum was dissolved
within moments by a very heavy whiff of Lemon Pledge.
“Red - what’s wrong?
Red? Are you okay? Hey RED! Wake up, huh?” Harley shook her friend’s
shoulders, hopping about her body like a puppy upset to find its human
companion in a bad way.
“He bit me.” Pamela
snuffled, rubbing her face into the pillows. “He bit me.”
“Who? What? Harvey?
Your new Ivan? Batman?!”
“The goddamn
bastard. I’ll kill him.” She snarled suddenly, sitting up,
slamming her delicate fists into the pillows. “He did something to me.
How is that even possible? There’s no poison that can harm me! NONE! But I
feel….” The exertion of her outraged outburst dimmed her eyes, and Harley
watched her angry face melt into glazed dizziness. “I feel…”
Ivy
slumped into the pillows again.
“Who? Who did this to
you? Red?” Now Harley was really starting to fret. She could see Ivy was in
a bad way; she wasn’t bruised or roughed up, and Harley couldn’t imagine
anyone ever managing to overpower Poison Ivy and have their way with her -
and anyway, they’d die. But something was terribly wrong with Red,
something seemed to have taken the life out of her.
That’s
right about when Harley spotted that her skin wasn’t alabaster all over;
there were two little red holes in Ivy’s throat, right over the jugular. They seemed sealed over, they weren’t leaking blood, but they were angry and
red and very fresh.
“He said he’d come -”
Finally, Pamela dissolved into sobs, scrunching Mistah J’s favorite pillow
furiously in her hands - “-come back for me - hic - bastard – ‘three kisses’
he said - I’ll kill him…”
Harley’s
eyes dropped and she settled in the pillows beside Ivy, tugging her friend’s
head into her lap and stroking her hair. A hard, cold look came over her
face that very few people ever saw on Harley Quinn. Those few people had
found it terrifying.
“Dun you worry, Red. He comes here, I’ll kill him first.”

Professor Jonathan
Crane had been given a personal laboratory at Danesti and privacy ensured by
Mr Volkoslak, ostensibly his Ukrainian uncle. Ostensibly his extensive
knowledge of the chemistry and biology of the fear emotion would help
research into a way to splice a certain gene into Danesti-brand wheat that
would trigger chemical reactions in rodent brains and literally scare the
vermin away from any grain stores they started to infest. None of the
company employees, of course, thought that letting The Scarecrow and his
fear chemicals anywhere near anything intended to be eaten by human
beings in the future was anything short of utterly insane.
Jonathan
Crane did not care.
Batman
would come. The bait was all there. Batman would come and Batman would find
him engaged in legitimate research. Batman would find nothing illegal
whatsoever about his employment or his experiments. And Batman would be
stymied, just in time for Halloween.
Crane
spied a cockroach crawling doggedly across his spotless workbench. Without a
second thought, he snatched it up and stuffed it in his mouth. *Crunch*.
What the fool did not
realize was of course that the real modifications to Danesti’s wheat
products had already been on the market for two years before Scarecrow’s
‘employment’ at the company began.
That was what he liked
- *crunch* - about his new Maste-*squish*- his new employer. He thought big, and he was patient in a way no Gotham rogue had ever
been. He had the time to set traps years or even decades in advance. He
never told the enemy what he was doing until it was already irreversibly
done. No riddles, no clues. In fact he preferred never to speak to the enemy
at all. He preferred to remain unseen, a shadow, a rumour, always just out
of reach. Just like the other Bat, only on the side of Bad.
It promised to be, no, it had already been, a most fruitful - mm -
*crunch* - servitude. Partnership, partnership…
The
modifications on their own were untraceable and harmless. However, they were
designed to trigger a reaction in a certain other pathogen, when the person
came into contact with -
A ruffle
at the window told him the Master was home. Crane turned to watch that mass
of chittering shadows and gleaming red eyes pour through the open space,
condensing out of a multitudinous host into a single tall, white-faced man
clad in a simple, if old-fashioned, all-black suit.
He cut an
impressive figure, less due to his appearance than to the sheer presence he
radiated when he was like this. Waves of predatory hunger and ancient
wickedness poured off him in every direction even before the last bat had
dissolved into part of his overcoat.
Just
like that other Bat, only on our side.
Dracula
smoothed his lapel with a hand that seemed more spidery for its long, sharp
nails. Crane noticed that his previously white hair was now iron-grey,
streaked with black.
“Professor Crane.” The
Count said pleasantly. “You have a most unsightly leg sticking out of your
mouth.”
Crane
glanced down, wiggled his lips, and sucked the cockroach’s last foot between
his teeth. Crunch.
“Sorry about that,
Master. Please forgive the poor wretch who, in seeking to emulate your
magnificence, has deigned to take the life of only the meanest of things -”
Crane
shook his head. Why was he talking like this, spewing all this servile
rubbish? He sounded like one of those fawning DEMON losers. But he couldn’t
help it. It just slipped out of his lips like a stray cockroach leg, every
time the Count was looking at him.
And he
was looking now, watching him with an amused half-smile.
“It is of no
consequence, my dear friend.” Dracula turned and stalked in that wolf-like
way of his into the centre of the room, sweeping his gaze about it - “You
have yet to be visited by the Bat-Man it seems.”
“How do you know?”
“I do not smell him,”
replied the vampire, “but be patient, and he will come. It is likely he is
occupied to-night with the pursuit of the Jester-”
“The Joker.”
The Count
seemed only mildly annoyed at the interruption. “-the Joker, whose
coincidental escape has proved so timely for us. It is fortuitous.” He
folded his hands. “And it gives me time.”
Scarecrow felt a surge
of strange excitement. “Did you get her? Was she surprised? Was she
frightened?”
“A gentleman does not
tell, Professor Crane.” Dracula chuckled, “But as the term hardly applies to
me, I shall tell you then that yes, your Poison Ivy has fed my veins.” He
lifted one finger and pressed it to the point of his long canine. “Although
her unique physiology certainly lent a novelty to the encounter.”
“You mean she tasted
like vegetable juice?” Scarecrow chortled, downright tickled. “No, no. Sour
lemonade, I bet. Or is it a different fruit when she’s afraid?” The mere
thought of that uppity tramp trembling in terror in the grip of a real
monster gave Scarecrow tremors of his own. “Oh, how I’d love to find
out.”
He
snatched up a spider without looking and bit off its head before it could
sink its fangs into his tongue in defense.
“I have come to ask
you, my dear friend,” the Count continued over the crunching of hairy
arachnid legs without skipping a beat, “if your Bat-Man’s pursuit of the
carnival fiend will keep both of them away from said knave’s residence
to-night.”
“Absolutely,” Crane
whispered, eyeing the tall man in black, “Joker has a hard-on for harassing
this Hollywood crowd filming a Batman movie - ha - in Gotham and he
won’t run home until he’s messed with them a little. And you’ve just bitten
Ivy, and that means…”
That
means Ivy will be headed straight to the arms of her best friend Harley
Quinn for consoling, and with no Joker or Batman around to interfere…
“Will you need an
invitation, Master?” Scarecrow licked his lips with anticipation. They
tasted like spider.
“No,” said Dracula
through a grim crimson smile, “I think not.”

The moon,
that ghostly eye set within the ebon cheek of the heavens, cast the cobweb
pallour of its glow through the window of the Hacienda - and onto the forms
of Harleen Quinzel and Pamela Isley, where they lay sleeping, still curled
within the passion-pit, as peacefully as children untroubled by the woes of
their dark world.
None there were to see
the motes of glowing dust drifting upon the rays of moonlight - none there
were to watch them filter through the cracks in the dusty window. Only one
heard the whispered command - ~Come...~ - though the other may have
felt its resonance ripple into her dreams, for she flinched in her sleep, a
tiny whimper of disturbance leaving her lips.
She did not feel the
weight of Ivy's head leave her lap nor the henna-stained tresses slither
away. She did not hear the window open...she did not hear the entranced Ivy
murmur with her own lips words of welcome, breaking the geas that
bound the undead spirit to remain outside uninvited. Harley slept on, her
eyes flickering wildly beneath their closed lids, and she did not stir until
the cold breeze tickled her arms, with the breath of nocturnal seduction -
the murmur of the Incubus, the call of the Wampyr...
“Mmfff...Puddin',
shuthewindows, Slobberpuss'll get out n' eat another cat...”
Harley
rolled to one side and broke the image of the dreaming, vulnerable waif by
sucking a snorting breath into her nostrils and commencing to very loudly
snore.
At the
window, a pair of crimson eyes turned from their feast to regard her. They
almost blinked.
Almost.
Harley
rolled to the other side, crossing her legs and sucking her thumb. “Mmmmpuddinshouldn't do tha with the cream pie....s'naughty...real
naughty...Puddinnnnnnn...”
Very well. Now
they blinked.
~
Wake. ~
Sleepily,
Harley's eyes fluttered open. She stretched like a matinee idol, though the
effect was ruined by the gothloli getup she was still wearing. Slowly, she
arched to her feet, as if drawn up by invisible arms. Slowly, her eyes
settled and focused on the blur before them...
Pamela
Isley floated by the window, her arms outstretched and coiled about a form
that was only half-solid; half-formed of those very motes of dust upon the
moonlight that had danced with faerie-fire only moments before. Her head was
tipped back and tilted to one side, and the thing - a mass of inky shadows,
fluttering like leather wings - was wrapped around her body, only an
indistinct shape with an awful white face pressed to Ivy's throat.
It had
horrible glowing red eyes, wide and staring and wolf-like and set into
charcoal sockets set in turn into chalk-white cheeks. The head lifted, like
a man's, only sharper and more bestial, its ruby lips peeled back from teeth
stained just as red. A trickle of crimson snaked down Ivy's throat. The
horror let her body arch gently back against its own, and lifted one hand -
just as pale as the face - to beckon Harley closer.
She felt
her body stiffen, paralysed. Some tiny part of her brain was still fully
conscious, and screamed to run, as fast and as far as she could, but she
found herself stumbling closer, lifting her hand toward the white face in
the window with its mouth that dripped with her best friend's blood -
~The
blood is the life, the life is the blood...open your veins and give yourself
to me. My bountiful winepress for a time and then baptised to a life within
death.~
“I...” Harley
breathed, touching her hand to the white cheek, meeting the terrible red
eyes. Her fear froze within her. There was nothing to do but to come closer,
closer, to those fangs and their promise -
At that
precise moment, the Hacienda door flung open, and the Joker sprang in, arms
full of rolls of film and movie props.
“HONEY! You won't
BELIEVE what happened on the way to the office today!”
The red
haze fled from Harley's brain. She stared from her Puddin', who was fumbling
for the light switch, to the white-faced demon sneering only inches away
from her.
Harley's
face scrunched in outrage, and Dracula narrowed his eyes sharply.
“YOU!”
With
that, she swung the sledgehammer she'd gone to sleep clutching around in a
wide, vicious arc, straight into Dracula's cheek.
Joker dropped his
props and gaped at the scene as the rest of the vampire's body was torn out
of the aether and flung against the wall by the impact. The Count's face
twisted in fury - the sheer demonic hate in those eyes stopped Harley
from swinging again and froze her to the spot - but Ivy, no longer held in
Dracula's arms, dropped against Harley with a squeak, and bowled both of
them off the windowsill and into a tangle of limbs in the passion-pit.
Joker
flicked on the light, illuminating Count Dracula peeling away from the wall
like Shreck from his coffin, casually twisting his shattered jaw back into
place with a sickening pop. He cracked his neck once, rolled his jaw from
side to side, and smirked. Then he lunged with all the ferocious suddenness
of a leaping wolf.
In doing
so, however, he set off the chain of death-traps Harley had set up in case
Ivy's attacker dropped by.
Down
swung the giant bladed pendulum. He darted aside with preternatural grace. Up popped the mechanical sheep with the flamethrower in its mouth. He became
a cloud of flapping bats that flew just out of reach of the gushing jet of
fire. Out came the hot pink XM134 Minigun that fired the exploding ping-pong
balls with smiley faces painted on them. The bats dissolved into mist,
through which the projectiles whizzed harmlessly before detonating against
the walls of the Hacienda, reducing Joker's favourite Big Mouth Billy Bass
with the lipstick and the Elvis wig to a rain of smouldering plastic
fish-chunks.
“HAAAR-LEY” Joker
howled in fury, stomping his foot. “Who the HELL is that?! AND WHY, IN GOD'S
NAME WHY, DID BILLY BASS HAVE TO DIE?!?”
He
stopped and choked, suddenly, as the man in question - not a man at all -
materialised out of the very air in front of him, clawed fingers wrapped
about the Joker's throat, lifting him from his feet to stare into an
aquiline face with black hair streaked with white at the temples, a black
goatee, and bushy brows meeting in a furious V over smouldering crimson
cinders of eyes.
“I am Dracula.” The
Count sneered. “Bid me welcome.”
And with
that he hurled the Joker across the room, straight into the passion-pit,
where now Harley and Ivy were trying to disentangle themselves. Harley rose
first, catching 'Puddin' in her lap with a squawk like a startled parikeet.
Dracula
brushed off his coat, the calm aura of command returning to him, and he
regarded his hosts with malevolent dignity, touching his hand to his brow in
a courtly, mocking greeting.
Joker and
Harley exchanged a glance, then glared up at their intruder.
“Dracula?”
“Dracula.”
“HA HA HA. He looks
NOTHING like Christopher Lee.”
Dracula
cocked his head, scowling.
They...knew him?
“Aww, Puddin', he
don't really look much like Gary Oldman either.”
“What!? OLDMAN?!? Come
on! Lee was the best!!”
“Oh pff. Gimme Gary
any day ...except in that icky old fart suit with the wig that looked like a
pair of buttocks... or ...mmmm....Frank Langella..” Harley sighed dreamily. “He could lock me in a cawffin any time he wanted...”
“Ewww, Harley, he's
ANCIENT now. Yuck!”
“You ain't gettin' any
younger yourself, buddy!” Harley retorted, poking her tongue out at him. “Frank Langella!”
Joker
hopped up onto his knees and got in Harley's face, nose to nose, shouting at
her. She bunched her cheeks, pressed her forehead to his, and gave as good
as she got.
“Christopher Lee!!”
“Nuh uh! GARY OLDMAN!” “GRR!! BELA LUGOSI!” “RICHARD ROXBURGH!” “JACK
PALANCE!” “GEORGE HAMILTON!” “LESLIE NIELSEN!”
“ENOUGH!” roared
Dracula, and his voice cracked like a thunderbolt, shaking the walls of the
Hacienda, rattling the deathtraps in their casing and sending the hyenas
whimpering, wriggling head-first into their kennels. Every lightbulb in the
building burst in a shower of glass, casting the room into a darkness in
which Dracula's eyes glowed with blood-red malice. “You will explain!
NOW!!”
The two clowns stared
in a kind of stunned awe for a moment, before Harley broke the silence -
“Hey, buddy, you're totally payin' the electricity bill!”
“How do you know of
me?” The Count barked, wondering if perhaps in all of his research - all
of the studies he had made of America, of its culture, its language, its
history, he had somehow overlooked something vital. Then the rage fled his
voice and it became a thing of languid, honeyed venom instead. “I wish to
know, my dear friends, and you will tell me, or I will consider the waste of
your blood worth the enjoyment of decorating the walls with it.”
Joker
glanced at Harley again. But it was Ivy, finally stirring, who spoke, in a
raspy, hungover voice.
“You pair of idiots
had better tell him before I do.”
Joker and
Harley glanced at Ivy, glanced at each other, and then looked at Dracula.
Both of
them grinned ear to ear, and simultaneously made a grab for the remote.

To be continued…
|