Batman
met me on the roof of an empty apartment block on Loeb street that was said
to be haunted by a woman in a blue bonnet. True or not, she was quiet
tonight, and I'd been waiting there with no sign of ghosts, vampires - or
bats - until that one landed right beside me in a whirl of black
cape, his eyes seeming so white in the cowl, narrowed in rage. Bat-intensity
crackled in the air.
It didn’t
bode well. But it was still God. Damn. Yummy.
“You didn't get him,
huh.” I wasn't afraid to be blunt.
Batman spat a little
blood on the roof tiles, and I could see his lip was split. “He knew I'd
tail him, of course, knew I'd know where he was going. He bypassed security
with a fake ID as Ledger's stunt double and went straight for the director -
to audition.”
“Sounds like Jack
logic.” It was the only thing in Batman's world that made less sense than
Feline logic. I'd give Joker that much.
“When the director
refused to see him, not knowing who he was, Joker threw a tantrum.” Batman
snorted. “He broke into the costume department and he - he -” Batman was
livid with rage.
I felt a
cold chill. Joker must have done something truly awful to get that look from
Bruce. Dozens, maybe hundreds of people must have died -
“...What did he do?”
Batman
mumbled something.
“Bruce, I can take it. Please tell me. What did Joker do?”
“HE GLUED RUBBER
NIPPLES TO THEIR BATSUITS, OKAY!?”
I clapped
my hand over my mouth so hard I nearly clawed my own cheek.
“It is NOT FUNNY
Selina. The costume designer liked the changes and they wanted to
hire JOKER as a consultant. HIRE HIM!!”
I flopped
to my knees as if bowled over by a Bat-fist. They just gave out under me. Poor Bruce, but I couldn't stop laughing.
Batman
folded his arms, and levelled his best bat-scowl at me. Nope. Didn't stop
the SmileX-alike hysterics he'd managed to reduce me to. Finally I managed
to wrest control of my breathing.
“Are you finished?” He
growled.
“Y-yes. Sorry, stud.”
I wiped my eyes with the back of my glove, and looked up at him from my
knee-flopped sit on the rooftop. “Just...images of Joker winding up as a
host on FAB! ... and you, swinging around in a bat-*snort*-nipple
suit...must be really cold in the cave...”
“Selina, it's no
laughing matter. Joker's still at large.”
“Allright, you've made
the point." I purred at him, sliding up his legs and body till we were face
to face - “...did you at least grab one of the suits? I might like
the changes too.”
“Ha. Ha.” Batman
wouldn't deign to smirk at that. His mouth stayed a thin, pursed line. I
kissed it anyway.
“You're sexy when
you're swallowing your pride. Serious though, how'd he get away?”
“I...” Batman scowled
again, and cleared his throat. “I almost had him. I tracked him to
the costume department and then -”
“Mm?”
“Then I met the
director.”
“Don't tell me he
wanted to hire you too.”
“No” Batman gravelled. “He thought I already was hired. He - kept calling me 'Christian'. I
told him two dozen times that I was Batman. He refused to believe me. That
stubborn, insolent -”
Selina
Kyle held her face together, because Catwoman's Cheshire smirk might have
made him clam up and ruin the story.
“- said “I
appreciate the depth of your Method acting there, Christian, but we have to
keep to schedule” - I told him I had to apprehend the Joker,
lives were at stake...he told me Heath was in makeup and wouldn't be
ready for fifteen and I was absolutely required at the Batcave set -”
Images of a fretting
Hollywood director - though to be fair, this guy was supposed to be English
- herding the real Batman in front of the lights and cameras thinking
he was the actor playing himself were just too damn surreal.
“So did you get to
meet Liam Neeson?”
“No.”
“Gary Oldman?”
“No.”
“What happened, then?”
“I couldn’t exactly
take off the cowl and prove I wasn’t this Bale person, and nothing I said
got through to the director, so I decided to play along until I could locate
the Joker.” Batman paced on the rooftop, cape flowing behind him, hands by
his sides. It made him look very animal, very predatory. I sat, amused, and
watched him. “They sent me to a part of the set where they were setting up
for a stunt. Remembering that Joker was disguised as a stuntman and aware of
the amount of dangerous props and materials he now had access to, I told
them I would do my own stunt and while they were briefing me, I spotted
him.”
Batman really had no
idea how good a storyteller he was. When he got going he had that gravelly,
first-person Sam Spade thing down pat and he played through events in his
mind and his words in a paced, cinematic way. As a result, while I should
have probably felt bad for him - Joker getting away was going to lead to
grief one way or another - I found myself enjoying the story too much to
share his airs of foreboding doom.
"And then?"
Batman
growled. “And then we went through the stunt as planned. Both of us.”
“Wow.”
“The director said the
fight scene on top of the giant crane looked particularly realistic. The
fight choreographer was furious.”
“Congratulations,
Bruce, you’re a movie star.”
“This is not how I
imagined revealing Batman to the public.”
“Oh, lighten up. Nobody will know it’s you. You HAVE to tell Dick and Tim. They’ll be hanging
out waiting for your big moment.”
Growl. “Yes, seeing
the real Batman and real Joker fighting it out in a movie because the
filmmakers mistook them for their stunt doubles!”
“You seem pretty
miffed. This would be the part where the Joker gets away.”
“He rigged one of the
stunt nets,” Batman growled, rubbing his jaw, “and clocked me with a fire
extinguisher. By the time I’d escaped all the set medics that swarmed all
over me trying to make sure ‘Christian’ was okay, Joker had slipped out and
stolen a car. I don’t know where he is now. They must have a new Hacienda,
the old ones are abandoned.”
“Ugh.” It sobered me
up, and explained the split lip. I slipped an arm about him. “Sorry, love. At least nobody else was hurt. You being there at all probably kept him on
the run enough to stop him from setting up anything lethal. Who knows, maybe
he’s had his fun with this movie crowd now and he’ll let them be?”
Batman
gave me a dark glare. “Your call to Jason?”
“Ah.” I'd almost
forgotten, but that was entirely Bruce's fault. Bat nipples indeed. “Yes. He’s real, no, they didn’t go to college together. Jason seemed to consider
Dracula to be extremely dangerous, though, and you know how serious Jason is
about supernatural threats. Not as serious as some.” I nudged his ribs with
an elbow. “Though at least he has better manners.”
Grunt. “Then the plague is a distraction. Dracula is using it to cover his tracks. With the outbreak and the hysteria it will cause, none of the hospitals will
notice an unusual surge of patients complaining of sudden pallor, fatigue,
and difficulty sleeping.”
“Right. And he chose
the Black Death because not only is he familiar with it, but he knows it’s
easily curable, so it won’t kill off too many of his potential dinners.”
“Yes. But there’s more
to it. I don’t know what. Scarecrow is involved. Possibly Ivy.”
“Through Danesti.”
Batman
nodded. “That’s his one mistake. Using a criminal as well-known as the
Scarecrow in one of his puppet companies to make whatever modifications he’s
made to the plague bacillus.” The eyes narrowed. “I intend to make him pay
for it.”
I opened
my mouth to tell Bruce about the Brides thing, and ...nothing came out. It
was one of those moments where even at the time, I knew I'd regret it later. But I also knew it'd send him off on an overprotective freak-out right when
he needed to be fully focused on bringing Dracula down, and I guess I didn’t
want to bring up anything that might make it more complicated than it had to
be. Instead, I found myself saying, simply enough;
“How do we stop him?”
“The earth-boxes. According to Stoker’s book, Dracula can only sleep in his native soil. He
brought tons of it here…” Batman growled, clenching his fist. “But not just
this time. He’s been sending boxes on and off to his puppet companies for
almost a year. And as you know, all of those boxes are missing. This is a
war, and this enemy is a master strategist. He deployed all of his pieces
long before he made his opening move. So far, he’s winning.”
Batman
crossed to the edge of the rooftop, gazing out across Gotham. His city. There’d never seemed to be more truth in those words than now.
“Dracula’s out there
somewhere, Selina. In my city. I can feel him. And he’s laughing.”

“I am…Dracula. I
bid you….velcome.”
*click*
The TV screen glowed with a Hollywood-devised reflection of a man who would
never cast one of his own.
“I never
drink…wine…”
One
reflection after another. Each time growing more distorted, more diluted,
more of a caricature.
*click*
*whzzz*
“I…am…Draculéa. And I
bid you welcome Mister Harker to my house.”
*click*
The Count’s ghost-pale hand clenched slowly about the remote.
“Children…of de
niiight. Vhat a mess dey make!”
Dracula’s
fingers squeezed, cracking the plastic.
“Allow me to
re-introduce myself. I am Count...Vladislaus…Dragoolya.”
*click*
"Vun
apple! Two apple! THREE APPLE!! Vlah ah ahh!"
Finally,
the remote control gave way, crushed to powder in the vampire’s iron-strong
grip. He dropped it in his lap and sat staring at the television.
Joker,
Poison Ivy, and Harley Quinn watched the Count’s stunned, blank face with
bated breath. Whole minutes passed; Harley’s face was slowly turning blue
from lack of oxygen. Still, Dracula didn’t move.
“…”
Lugosi,
Carradine, Shreck, Lee, Oldman, Langella, Palance, Kinski, Roxburgh,
Hamilton, Nielsen, the names and the faces - all claiming to be his - lay
etched into the covers of the DVD collection scattered over the pillows
around him. Decades of emulation, of glorification, of mockery.
“Count?” Ivy whispered
in the silence, hesitant to break it.
“…heh.”
“I think he’s upset
about the hair-buttocks.” Harley murmured in Joker’s ear.
“…heh…hm hm hmh.”
Dracula lowered his head into his lap, and they couldn’t tell if he was
actually about to break down in tears until they heard the muffled
chuckling.
“Uh oh.”
Dracula
threw his head back and peals of bitter, self-mocking laughter broke from
his throat, to echo through the midnight sky.
“Heh,” chuckled the
Joker, “I like him more already.”

Jonathan Crane sat in
the dark, fingers twitching, staring down a fat, juicy black rat he had
spent the past half hour patiently luring out of the hole in the wall with a
sample of Danesti’s wholemeal grain.
He could claim it was
an experiment. Yes, that was it. A final test, even though they already knew
the modifications had been a success. Oh the Master would be furious
if he saw Crane risking exposure of their best-laid plan like this. But it
wasn’t his fault! It was that rat, watching Crane as he worked like
that, with those beady little eyes and that sleek, furry black body so ripe
and full of rich, red, delicious life.
Yes, the little
bastard had it coming, and as soon as he took a nibble at the grain, he
wouldn’t even care about Crane’s fingers around his neck.
“Crane.”
The evening lacked a
punctuating flash of lightning, but Jonathan paused and widened his eyes
anyway, slippery-sliding to his feet and turning to face the giant caped
silhouette looming behind him. He tried – very hard – to seem like a
dangerous criminal confronting a crimefighter and not a teenager trying to
hide a porn magazine he’d just been caught reading, but with the rat behind
him and all it could spoil, the latter image certainly sprang to mind.
“Batman! What a
perfectly pleasant shock you are. Welcome to my laboratory.” Crane
gave a deep bow, which would’ve looked far more disturbing had he been
wearing his Scarecrow garb and not a simple white lab coat.
God damn it, why was
the rat not moving?
Batman glanced between
Scarecrow’s lanky legs at the rat squatting passively near a small pile of
grain behind him.
“Trying to catch the
plague, are we?”
Damnit. The little
furry bastard chose now to finally eat the grain. Scarecrow’s eyes
didn’t flinch away, though, and he stared back at Batman to keep the Dark
Knight’s attention fixed on himself. “Is that what you think, Batman?
Perhaps I am! Wouldn’t it be a frightful way to end my career as a
criminal? Unfortunately you’re wrong. I am already a criminal no longer.”
Batman’s fist shot
out, grabbing his collar and hauling him close.
“I know who you’re
working for, Scarecrow.”
“Danesti Botanical
Research Institute, dear Bat, and you will find that I am doing nothing
illegal here. I was offered this job. I am doing what I am being honestly
paid for, no more and no less. I, Professor Jonathan Crane! You can’t
throw me back in Arkham! I’m a reformed citizen, I’m…”
Batman’s patience wore
thin and he swung Crane away from the rat and slammed him hard into a filing
cabinet. “WHERE IS DRACULA?”
He knows.
SHIT!
“You’ve
crossed the line, Scarecrow. You’ve brought a monster to
Gotham and endangered thousands of lives. IT ENDS NOW. WHERE IS HE!?”
Scarecrow hadn’t seen
him this level of pissed outside of Hell Month. It made their dockside
confrontation look like a kindly schoolteacher chastising a kindergartner. His gut twisted at the thought of months wrapped in plaster in the Arkham
infirmary. No! Not this time! Not when he was so close to the perfect scare!
“D-dracula?” He
blinked innocently – “-what have you been sniffing, Batma-OOF!”
Crane doubled over as
Batman’s fist met his belly, and was caught by his rising knee and flung
back against the cabinet. Batman grabbed him by the collar again and swung
him in a wide circle. Then he kicked his prey again, sending him sprawling. Dizzy, Scarecrow coughed a few times and shook his head.
“N-no Batman…” He
snarled, blinking away tears of pain. “It’s you who’ve crossed the
line. You who’ve committed assault on an unarmed civilian engaged in
the - *cough* - legal activities for which he is employed. You’ve had it!”
He laughed, taunted the great bat-eared bastard, lured him into the trap
just as he had lured the rat Batman had, mercifully, seemed to have
forgotten about. “You’ve finally snapped! Breaking into my workplace,
ranting about vampires, harassing and attacking me for no reason!
There’s only one tinfoil-hat Arkham headcase here now, Batman, and it’s
you!”
“You’re not convincing
anyone, Crane.” Batman growled, cracking his knuckles and taking a menacing
step forward. “I know what you’re doing and I am stopping
you.”
“Do you?” Crane
murmured, narrowing his eyes, “Do you really? Let me enlighten you to a few
things you aren’t aware of. One is that the security cameras you disabled on
the way in were functional decoys and I’ve been recording this entire
conversation. Two is that I’ve already taken out a restraining order against
you that the police are processing as we speak. They’d have handed it to you
already if you had a legal address. I guess they’ll be leaving it at your
bat-signal.” Crane smirked, straightening and looking the Bat in the eye. The fear was delicious; and he detected a hint, just a hint, in the eyes of
his nemesis.
“That won’t hold up in
court once I hand them the evidence proving yours and Danesti’s link to the
plague outbreak.”
“What? Are you
insane?” Scarecrow said just a little too loudly – for the unseen camera’s
sake, no doubt - and then broke out into a full rant. The emotion in it was
not entirely faked; the fear and frustration at having been caught unawares
despite the meticulous plan was very real, and he poured it into every word.
“What could my work
here possibly have to do with the plague?! That was an accident at the
dockyard I had nothing to do with and you know it! There’s no such evidence
because there is no such link! You just can’t stand the thought that
one of your punching bags might have actually gone clean! Admit it! You
don’t want ANY of us to reform because it would deprive you of the excuse to
vent your violent sociopathic urges on those you don’t have to feel guilty
about brutalizing!”
That gave Batman
pause. The Dark Knight narrowed his eyes. For a moment, Crane thought he may
have taken his pantomime too far. But when Batman spoke, it was in a calm,
level, and lethal tone of voice.
“Crane. Enough. Give
yourself up and tell me where Dracula is. Now.”
Backed into a corner. But not out of the game.
“You’re crazy! Crazy!
I’m calling the police!” Scarecrow stumbled back against his lab-bench,
dramatically, but his thin fingers closed around an object he had hidden
there. Batman didn’t miss it. His eyes narrowed and he stepped closer; but
he was now a little more cautious about pummeling Crane on camera without
probable cause.
Crane smirked. “Batman! I believe after all this time, I just figured out what you
really fear. The very law that you claim to enforce.” He straightened,
stepping closer to Batman, gathering his dignity. “Or is it something a
little more primal?”
At that precise
moment, Batman saw two things; the rat Crane had been examining earlier
sitting on the floor, licking its forepaws, perfectly placid despite the
chaos
taking place very close to it. And an oozing shadow pouring in through a
crack in the wall – something that congealed into a tall, humanoid shape.
“Dracula.”
Batman hissed, turning his full attention to the new entrant. He felt a cold
chill enter his body, seeping straight through the suit. It could be an
illusion. Crane could have somehow slipped him his toxin during the
struggle…but somehow, Batman knew he was not facing a hallucination. There was a tangible presence that had entered the room. It was him.
The vampire lord had finally made his appearance.
Batman clenched his
fists and prepared to take him on. His mind snapped into protocols designed
for the JLA missions, for confronting enemies of superhuman strength, speed,
and supernatural abilities. He would opt for a strategy of strong defense,
while harrying the enemy with fast and constant hit-and-run strikes, forcing
the Count onto the defensive and preventing him from using his metahuman
powers in offense while conserving Batman’s stamina for the critical moment. In this way, using an attack that seemed more aggressive and undisciplined
than it actually was, he would play on the monster’s arrogance until it made
that one, fatal slip.
Only when the white
face coalesced momentarily into being, and Batman saw Crane’s victorious
grin, did he realize he himself had fallen into a trap.
Dracula exploded. What
had for an instant seemed to be a humanoid form became a cloud of flapping,
fluttering, chittering beasts, and they poured straight into Batman’s chest
and swarmed around him with a vicious, controlled aggression that real bats
would never possess. His vision was obscured by snapping, slavering white
teeth and tiny red eyes amid a wall of roiling black leather; he stumbled
back, fumbling for his belt, for something that would repel the
damnable mass. Their fangs couldn’t penetrate the Batsuit, but they came at
his face, his mouth, his eyes…
A childhood terror
long since suppressed by creating a persona modeled after the object of his
phobia (and working in a cave full of them) suddenly returned in full force.
And Crane smiled as he
watched what the hidden camera would record only as Batman having a
mysterious conniption fit. Dracula cast no reflection in a mirror, no matter
what form he happened to be in, and they had discovered to their pleasure
that he was also invisible to the medium of film.
Crane slid the object
into his palm and turned it over, pressing buttons. It was, of course, not
the controls of a death trap at all.
“Police? Hello. I… I
want to report a break in and – and assault - it’s Batman, and he’s gone
crazy, he’s having some kind of violent fit. Please hurry.” Pause. “Danesti
Botanical Institute, corner of fifth and-”
Batman lurched out of
the cloud, grabbing for the phone, the demonic bats that made up Dracula’s
body still clinging to his suit, while more regrouped in the air behind him
for another surge.
Crane dropped the
phone, snatched up the second object he’d strategically placed, and
sprayed Batman full in the face.
But it wasn’t the fear
toxin. Batman habitually carried his cure for that in his belt. It was
something a little more mundane. Something a civilian fearing for his life
might use on a menacing, crazed assailant. Something like… mace.
Batman’s world burst
into a white wall of pain. Choking, blinded, and very aware that he was
still surrounded by a six-hundred year old supernatural monster who could
change forms and go for the killing blow at any moment, Batman conceded
defeat. It was time for a strategic withdrawal and he had a split second to
make it. He open-palmed the Scarecrow in the chest, hurling the thin man
over his lab bench, and pushed away. He dove through the maelstrom of bats
and rolled as he hit the ground. His hand went for his belt, for the
Bat-sonar.
It was a gamble. He
had no idea if Dracula would be affected, but it was his only chance. He
cranked the sonar to levels that would be paralyzing to normal bats.
Evidently the Count’s
chiropteran mode had senses similar enough to real bats to feel the
high-pitched sonic pulse; the bat-swarm screeched and scattered, if only
momentarily, but it was long enough for Batman to haul himself to his feet
and leap through the window, landing with a less-than graceful, jarring
thud. He hit the controls for the Batmobile’s emergency autopilot and
followed the sound of the wheels he heard, with great relief, tearing around
the corner of the building. It took him scant moments to get inside the car
and activate the Batmobile’s shields; but he was just in time, as he heard a
sinister fluttering and, moments later, felt a series of soft thudding
strikes as Dracula, still in bat-cloud-form, futilely attacked the
windshield.
Then the fluttering
stopped and there was a wolven snarl from outside. As Batman fumbled with
anti-irritants to cleanse his eyes and restore his sight, the entire
Batmobile was suddenly rocked by a heavy impact from the left side. Then
another. The car tipped up onto two wheels, despite weighing as much as a
tank. If it was hit again it would overturn. It was time to go.
“Autopilot. Batcave.”
Batman barked, and the car’s computer blipped in recognition. The engines
roared and the Batmobile shot like a bullet out of Danesti’s carpark,
winding down Gotham’s narrow streets, dodging traffic with pre-programmed
ease. As he applied the anti-irritants, Batman muttered a series of further
commands to the car – ‘Evasive route’ – the vehicle would take an
indirect trip home and throw off any pursuers – ‘Detect intrusion’ –
to make sure the damned vampire wasn’t clinging to the hood. The car beeped
a negative. Batman had escaped.
Joker. Scarecrow. Dracula. Batman was having a really bad night.
He could only hope
Catwoman’s mission had fared a little better.

Plucking himself from
the tangle of limbs in which he had landed, Scarecrow brushed off his
labcoat and resisted the urge to chortle and gloat until he had deactivated
the hidden security camera.
When it was done,
however, he fairly whooped with glee, slapping his hand against the
overturned bench. “We got him, we got him we got him! Ha ha! Master! Master
we got him!”
He turned around, only
to be suddenly lifted from his feet. His laughter was choked off by white
fingers around his throat; they were bitingly cold, and the effort with
which they lifted him was minimal to the point of nonexistence.
Dracula leveled his
terrible red eyes straight on Crane’s own. Scarecrow stared in terrified
fascination as the crimson tint in the irises seemed to darken and spread,
snaking in wet veins through the whites until the entire eye was red. It was
like watching blood spill on a frozen lake.
“M-master, wh-why?”
Dracula lifted his
other hand, dangling the placid, plump black rat by the tail. Even now, held
in the grip of an unnatural Undead horror, the creature did not squirm or
panic.
Dracula threw Crane
down and tossed the rat on the floor in front of him. He did not say a word,
but such was the storm of fury behind those eyes that Crane knew with utmost
certainty the exact meaning of the vampire’s rage; he had nearly been caught
doing something that would have clued Batman in to all of their plans, and
if he made another mistake like that, he would end his alliance with Dracula
as a red smear on the floor.
The icy red stare
remained, unblinking, as Crane groveled and fawned in apology. Then the eyes
narrowed and shifted from Crane’s own to the rat at his feet, then back. The
command was unmistakable.
The police were on the
way. He was to remove the evidence, while his Master watched. If he
flinched, if he choked, if he vomited, he was dead.
Trembling, pulling his
eyes forcibly from that demon’s glare but feeling it beating down on him
from above, Crane grabbed the rat and forced it whole into his mouth.

To be continued…
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