The church on the corner
of Lang and Furst had once been one of Gotham’s most well-kept architectural
secrets: not as grandiose as the city’s larger cathedrals, it nonetheless
possessed a certain disturbingly gothic aesthetic. There always seemed to be
one gargoyle too many crouching amid the gutters and balconies; the
belltower tapered into a tower-top reminiscent of a slightly sagging
wizard’s hat and both inside and out, the lines of the building slanted at
odd, nigh-Lovecraftian angles. Its stained glass windows spliced the
standard theme of saints and angels with sometimes macabre images of
America’s murky colonial history. It was a quirky curiosity of a building
that might have towered over the surroundings in the days when it was built,
but had long since been buried in skyscrapers. Those had only loomed higher
since No Man’s Land, and the church, which had always attracted more
tourists than parishioners, had been deconsecrated and abandoned due to
structural damage from the quake. A local entrepreneur had attempted to buy
it, to turn it into a theatre restaurant, but had met with outrage from the
same Gotham historical societies who had lobbied, hard and successfully, to
save the building from condemnation. Nonetheless, no restoration attempts
had been made, and the front gates were now patched with warnings and No
Entry signs.
It was from the balcony
of the dusty belltower that Count Dracula surveyed the streets beyond like
an emperor, fittingly, ruling from the lowest place rather than the highest.
“It is a quirk of
history,” he murmured, “that men will always build tallest that which they
value the most. In ages past, the grandest structures were castles and
fortresses, the citadels of kings and warlords, then the sumptuous
pleasure-palaces of emperors. Yet even those were superseded in time by
churches, mosques, temples, the houses of God and emblems of religion’s
might. And now they in turn have been overshadowed by these towering pillars
of industry and commerce.” A sweeping gesture to the glittering towers
beyond, and Dracula laughed. “The works of Man reveal his changing heart.”
“Phalluses.”
Dracula turned, with an
arched brow, to where Poison Ivy lounged in the shadows behind him,
surrounded by a creeping mass of vines that were, even now, stripping the
last few drops of blood from the sagging carcass of a stray dog that had
been sleeping in the church.
“Pardon me?”
Ivy hissed again, waving
her hand dismissively. “The works of Man. Every one of them a penis!
You can’t top Gotham for that! Just look out there! Rows and rows of ugly
phallic monstrosities of cold concrete and glass, defiling what used to be
pristine wilderness, Mother Nature, the female world. And all
of them built by rich greedy fools trying to hide their insecurities and
erectile dysfunctions and one-up the competition by building the biggest,
shiniest prick on the block.”
She gave another languid
gesture and the vines flung the dog’s corpse aside, then lifted to her brow
and wove themselves into a May Queen crown of leaves for their mistress; the
vampire vines, however, were so twisted that it more strongly resembled a
crown of thorns.
“…well said, Ms Isley.”
Dracula kept up the urbane, inscrutable smile, at least until Ivy wasn’t
looking and he could let the bemusement furrow his brow. He put the mask
back up, and turned his attention to a new voice. It somehow managed to lilt
loudly.
“Oh Red, you’re gonna
drive Mistah D nutso talking about stuff like that all the time. And
that’d be the last thing we need! Poor ol’ Mistah D getting dragged to the
happy house. Why, they wouldn’t let him sleep in a cawffin at Arkham! He’d
hafta get used to the crummy bunks, wouldn’tcha, Mistah D?” Harley slid from
the shadows, still in 50’s screen goddess mode, which was apparently her
interpretation of what a sexy vampire queen should be like. She hip-swayed
over to Dracula and draped herself on the Count’s shoulder.
In answer, Dracula leaned
out over the city, smiling quietly, reaching up to stroke Harley’s hair with
the closest thing he was capable of to genuine affection.
“It is right for them to
fear us, my child.” Dracula continued, eyes on the street below. “As the
sheep fears the wolf, so it shall and should be. Once, only the brave or the
mad would venture out of doors after dark for fear of we nosferatu. Now mine is the last of the ancient bloodlines left – all other vampires
that remain are pathetic, dying strains devoid of all the power and terror
we once had. There is no comparison between the proud line of Dracula and
these …mushroom-growths.”
He shook his head in
disgust.
“Not to us to despair at
the dark existence that is given us, not to us to grieve for the gentle life
of the bleating lamb that we had before the baptism of death. Not to the
Draculesti, not to my father, who answered his enemies with massacre and
cruelty that terrified even the hard-hearted Turk and treacherous boyar,
never again to sleep without the name of Dracula heavy upon his thoughts.”
The Count bared his feral, wolf-like teeth, and sneered at the city beyond.
“We of the Dracul are
beasts, we are devils, we are the grinning face of the Reaper. We come to
offer temptation that cannot be resisted, power that cannot be denied, and
eternal life within Death.”
He faced Ivy and Harley,
the former watching him with shrewd, quiet scrutiny and the latter an
expression of somewhat poorly-masked admiration. It was Ivy who laughed,
however, nudging her friend with a bare shoulder.
“What do you know, Harle?
The famous Count Dracula is certainly more eloquent than your average Gotham
boy. I could almost grow to like him if he had, you know, asked
before he bit my neck. You could use some lessons in how to treat a lady.”
She narrowed her eyes, and part of her couldn’t believe she wasn’t springing
on him to teach him a lesson in pain instead. Something – something
that had not been there before the bite – was holding her back. “And you
picked dangerous girls to toy with, Count. I hope you’re ready for us.”
In answer he only gave
her a courteous, familial smile.
“I do not toy with you,
my dear. I do not choose my heirs nor my allies at a whim. I studied you
from afar long before I came to Gotham and sought you both as my Brides. For
even alive, you are already predators who grip the world by the throat and
make it beg to do your bidding. With the gift of Un-Death and the powers of
darkness at your command, not only Gotham City but all the waking world will
tremble. You are Nosferatu in spirit and thought already; soon, you
shall be true queens of the night.”
“And what about you?” Ivy
asked, her eyes on the black-clad man. What remained of her free will
screamed at her from within; the survival instinct of her animal brain,
telling her that death by Dracula’s hand, no matter the power it gave, would
still be dying, her life and freedom irrevocably forfeited. Ivy’s
pride reeled at the concept of being slave to this man for all
eternity; but now, so much of the vampire spell was upon her that they were
distant voices shrieking futilely at a locked door. “What’s your place in
this?”
“The Un-Dead need a
king.” He replied, “After I was awakened in this century, I spent a decade
scouring the lost and lonely places of the world for other wampyri,
and found that my kind have changed greatly since my age. We have evolved
with the times; these modern vampires do not fear the cross, nor need their
native soil in which to sleep – they are no longer bound to superstition,
for this cynical century has stripped it of its power. But there is a cost. The hungry spirits which raise them from death are weak, diluted, and
do not control the husk but share it. Much of the living person’s
identity survives and so too its weaknesses. Doubt, uncertainty, attachment
to those they had loved, moral repulsion at what they must do nightly to
survive. Their minds are not the mind of a demon, but of a human, and
ill-equipped for the existence of a vampire, and they soon sink into despair
and self-loathing, or become mindless brute savages lurking in the
back-woods of your great America.”
“You’re gonna take over
then, and whip them into shape?” Harley piped in, leaning closer in
breathless awe. She nearly tripped over.
The Count laughed,
shaking his head and giving a grand, dismissive gesture. “Oh, child. Why
would I want an army of simpering amateur thespians and thugs in black
leather? No, my lady, my own blood is stronger, and bred of older, fiercer
times. My offspring are to these ones as the great wolf to the timid
house-dog. I shall use Gotham City as my nesting ground, for it is a city
gripped in darkness and pain, and its people are hardy and strong of mind
and will. The weak Un-Dead shall be culled; if they despair so of their dark
un-life, then I shall grant their wish, and end it. My clan, with Gotham’s
greatest fiends as its generals, shall lead my strong children to conquest. The vampire race will at last have a king and a kingdom, and all in our path
shall be ground into the bloodstained earth.”
“…” Harley was, for once,
speechless. When she finally found a word, it was “Wow.”
“What about Batman?” Ivy
asked, after consideration.
Dracula, she noted, was
no fool. “The wolfhound in Bat’s clothing. If he is even a thousandth of the
man his reputation makes of him, he already knows why I am here and he is as
we speak dismantling whatever he can of my schemes. As long as he is alive
he will hinder us at every opportunity, and thus, he must be eliminated
immediately. I will not let him live to be another Van Helsing. But trust
me, my dear Brides, events are already in motion that will see him destroyed
from within.”
Ivy gave one-sided smirk
and lifted from her throne-of-vines, walking over to join them. She tilted
her head to a disgusting sound she could hear from the rundown catacombs
beneath the church; filtering up from so deep that only a vampire’s ears
could catch it.
“And what are our plans
for tonight, Count?”
“To-night, the games
begin-” Dracula
began to reply, in a velvet purr of malice.
“-Tonight, we go to
WAAARRR!” Harley interrupted him, cutting loose with a shrill, villainous
cackle that, had she but known it sounded more like the Wicked Witch of the
West than a sultry vampiress, she might not have been so proud of.
Dracula patiently
waited it through, lifting something in his hand and tapping sharp-nailed
fingers against the cover.
It was a box of
cereal; Count Chocula’s goofy grin mocked him from the cardboard.
“No. To-night, I feel
the urge to update my wardrobe.”
Harley and Ivy
exchanged a glance and said, as one, “Kittlemeier’s.”
From below came
sound of someone playing old ragtime showtunes, on a pipe organ, while
laughing to raise the roof.
It was in Styria
that I first encountered the legends and superstitions of those creatures
known as ‘wampyr’, which in younger lands are known only from fairy-tale and
the ribald fantasies of libertine poets. In the old countries, however,
superstition is given life by faith, and for the local people, to stay after
dark outside of doors, there are more to fear than him so-maligned Wolf, and
to linger on an inauspicious night or to visit those moss-encrusted ruins of
old castles and tombs unthinkable. Such things to these people are not the
stuff of tale or rhyme but of grim and day-to-day reality; that is to say,
they are by no definition a laughing matter…
The Bat-Clan, with one
extra feline member, hit the streets at dusk like a squad of Marines
dropping into a combat zone. After Batman’s grim-faced briefing on the
nature of their enemy, and the solemn handing out and arming up with such
weapons as garlic-essence sprays, sonar bat-repellants and crucifix
pendants, they fanned out into multiple, partnered teams. Nightwing and
Robin, Catwoman and Batgirl, Batman on his own – but to work closely with
Oracle from afar. All of them went forth with the knowledge that they faced
the possibility of a new kind of nocturnal war.
The plague had, within
the scant days of its coming, claimed eight lives. Doctors were at a loss to
explain the mortality rate of what should have been an easily curable
infection. Batman did not have to examine the bodies to know that the true
cause of death would be massive loss of blood.
It is with great
seriousness that I say here that the stories of such things are grounded in
utmost truth, and that there are things of mystery upon this earth that defy
the name of God, and are beholden to the Devil. Such a one is the vampire,
and I have now experienced with my own eyes and my own heart the evil that
walks in these old lands.
Nosferatu are, as I
have been told and as I have observed, a kind of malevolent ghost, or akin
to a ghost in that they are Un-Dead, a spirit that should sleep in the peace
of God’s green earth until Judgment Day, but instead lingers unquiet. Yet
this creature be unique in that he is trapped within the husk of his own
dead corpse and cannot rest in the grave, but must rise from it nightly to
steal the blood of his still-living relative as they sleep. He must do this
to fuel his unholy not-life and to stave off the rot of Death that claim him
long ago.
By Batman’s
calculations, Dracula may have created through cumulative nights more than a
dozen vampires. Those who had died from the ‘plague’ were the prime
suspects, and they would be, as Van Helsing’s diary explained, fully-Undead
and unable to be saved. But recent Missing Persons and unreported
disappearances might account for more. Batman held onto the hope that, in
trying to make such a large number of vampires in such a short time, the
Count would leave many of his victims infected but alive, and thus able to
be salvaged back to humanity – though Batman still did not know how to
accomplish that without killing Dracula himself.
The At Large list
weighed heavily on Batman’s mind, for there was always the possibility that
one or more of Gotham’s rogues had crossed paths with Dracula, whether by
accident or the Count’s design, and become infected. To that end, Batgirl
was to stake out the newly-rebuilt Iceberg, while Catwoman went inside and
dug around – to find out if any prominent Rogues were MIA. This task would
be difficult, as with Scarecrow’s inevitable Halloween plotting and no party
invite, any number of the shrewder Rogue population may have battened down
in a secure lair as Riddler had been planning to.
As we have had room to
observe, there are two kind of vampire in fact, though folklore often does
not differentiate. The person who has been bitten by the vampire and infect
by his poison, yet still live, may exhibit traits of the vampire as he
slowly change to the second type. To him may be the strength and speed of
the creature, and its hunger for blood, but it is not until he has passed to
death and risen from it that he become true Un-Dead, and may then command
the more curious powers that make his solid body as the form of a beast, or
immaterial as mist and shadow. Once true dead-Un-Dead, the person’s soul is
truly lost, trapped in a cruel purgatory by the beast who wears his shape,
and can only be released by the destruction of the corpse and banishment of
the demon, the vampire spirit.
Cassandra Cain
squatted against a familiar rooftop on a familiar stakeout point; the
Iceberg Lounge, looking cleaner and newer since the incident she had
unfortunately been a part of had burned it down. She watched Catwoman slink
inside, one charming half-smile given to the bouncer as she passed him –
he’d already been moving aside as soon as she approached. A tiny jolt of
envy sprang upon her heart. Cass could’ve flitted past the man, an unseen
shadow, or she could have walked up in full view and taken him down in a
blaze of fists and feet. But she couldn’t ever seem to walk, as Selina did
by sultry, feline nature, the path of least resistance.
The stakeout. It was
more important. Selina was inside; thermals showed Killer Croc at the bar,
Mad Hatter at his table, a few DEMON thugs and King Snake engaged in a
heated argument, by their body language. Another night,
it might have warranted her attention. Tonight, it was more important to
note where Selina Kyle was going.
Cass checked the list
off in her head as more Rogues were identified. She knew them well, by body
shape and size, even from an indistinct thermal image. She could hear their
distinctive voices from the microphone Catwoman was wearing. Batman had
theorized a vampire might give off a different heat signature to a normal
person – so far Cass had identified quite a few of the Iceberg crowd in
their usual places, unaware or unafraid of the growing danger threatening
Gotham. But no cold-bodied vampires were among them.
Cassandra, for her
part, had reacted the least strongly to the news that Count Dracula was
raising an army of vampires in the heart of Gotham City. She was unfamiliar
with decades of pop culture and horror movies; to her, he was just a name,
just an enemy, and this was just a mission. She was glad to have been
partnered with Catwoman instead of with Robin or Nightwing, whose
incredulous quips had not ceased since the briefing. The further away from
them she was tonight, the better.
Inside, she noted,
Joker and Scarecrow were absent; and the only women inside other than the
Cat were Roxy Rocket, Penguin’s hostesses, and a few groupies and
henchwenches. No Ivy, no Harley Quinn. Selina was approaching a table, and
Cass shuffled to another position on the rooftop, as a ceiling support was
blocking the thermals; it was only when she identified Riddler’s voice that
she knew who Selina was talking to, but a moment later, the Cat had
surreptitiously rubbed her wrist, and switched off the mic.
“What the hell you
do?” Cass muttered under her breath.
“Riddle me this; when
does the Cat wear a bell by choice?”
I gave Eddie a wry
glare and slid my hand along my forearm, stretching just enough to flick the
tiny mic-switch to off. Cass would’ve figured out who was in here and who
wasn’t by now, and I’d be doing Eddie a disservice to leave it on even after
he’d noticed I was wired. Whatever else could be said about the Riddler, he
knew his gadgets.
“You got me, Eddie. But what are you doing out of your bunker? It’s nearly Pumpkin Time.”
“Looking for you,
Selina. You haven’t been answering your phone.”
I cursed. Between the
mess of rooftops and sewers and long calls to Jason, I hadn’t even checked
my voicemail.
I shook my head, “Not
here, let’s go to a booth.”
“Mine. I’ve de-bugged
it.” Riddler sniffed. “Oswald’s been even more paranoid than usual since the
rebuild. GOSH, EDAMAME WALL?”
He offered an arm, and
we wandered casually to Eddie’s corner, sliding into the plush, outrageously
comfortable seats. I’d give Oswald this; stingy as he was on his presently-limited budget, the
old bird had too much pride to skimp on creature comforts. I wriggled in
delight, then settled in for business.
“You haven't answered
my riddle, either.”
“Listen, Eddie, it’s
not what it looks like. They’re scanning the place to make sure D. hasn’t
gotten to anyone in here. It’s in all our best interests to know who
might put bite marks in our necks while we sleep.”
Eddie snorted. “D. situation bad, I take it?”
“Really bad. ‘Crow was
working with D. at Danesti all along. He’s spliced something into the wheat
products that, long story short, is going to make anyone infected by the
plague rats completely unafraid of hickies and give D.’s kids a free
buffet.”
“Sounds tasty. But
come now, Selina, you’d best spill the IL SATED. You know I like my long
stories long.”
“I’ll say it has to do
with Toxoplasma, then, and let your brain fill in the blanks.”
Riddler whistled. “Smart.”
“Can I trust you to
pass the relevant details, and the relevant details only, along to the rest
of the crowd?”
He gave me an
incredulous arch of the brows for that one. “You want me to warn everyone
that D. is in town? I’d be laughed out of the ‘Berg, Lina! They’ll think I
caught a noseful of fear gas a day early.”
“I’m just giving you
the medicine, you pick the spoonful of sugar, Eddie.” I caught myself
glancing back to the crowd, picking up as the evening ticked by. “…Can’t see
Pam.”
“Pam or Harley. Laughing Boy’s not in, so that might explain Harley’s absence, but you know
how Pam likes to, alas the tired cliché, rule the Penguin’s roost and she
left on amiable terms last time, so she’s not sulking in her lairs.”
“D.’s looking for
Brides.”
“Can’t see Pammy as
the marrying type, myself,” Eddie paused to slurp a cocktail straw, “I’d
pity D. if he tried. Talk about a homewrecker! Can you imagine an entire
Transylvanian castle overgrown with vines and stinking of Lemon Pledge?
Ugh.”
I found myself
smirking. The humor was appreciated; it wasn’t what we needed right now, but
it was appreciated.
I was about to speak
again when a small squawk alerted me to Oswald Cobblepot’s approach. It set
off alarm bells right away; when the Penguin had something to say to
Catwoman, he usually waddled over waving his arms and trumpeting suave
salutations to the felicitous feline felon or something equally odious. This
time he didn’t say a word, just squawked to let us know he was coming and
then settled down into Eddie’s booth and glared at us both. I had to wonder
if he’d somehow figured out about my wire…
“Not often that I see
you in here anymore, Catwoman.”
He meant ‘Not often’
as in ‘not every night after a successful prowl, allowing me as a senior
rogue of your own stature to fence your plunder, rather than letting
nameless nobodies feather their nests at my expense-kwak’. We’d been over
this before, several times. Oswald’s constant complaining to anyone who
would listen that Catwoman used out of town fences reinforced the impression
that I was still stealing.
“Interesting that you
two choose to come in, not even greet me, then huddle in a corner, disable
my audio security and mutter into your cocktail glasses right as an outbreak
of – wark! – Black Plague is keeping half of my clientele indoors.”
“Implying something,
Ozzie?” I narrowed eyes at him, and let my claws drum visibly on the
tabletop. “I thought you’d have learned by now never to rub a cat’s fur the
wrong way, especially when she’s trying to relax.”
Penguin jabbed a
shiny-gloved finger at me, then pinched his monocle in a scowl that ran
between Eddie and I. He wasn’t taking the intimidation tactics tonight, and
that didn’t bode well either. “You know what’s going on. This is some ploy
of Crane’s, is it not? You can’t – gwak – keep me out of the loop – and
expect to continue to patronize my bar. I want answers. He’ll be banned for
a year if his antics cost me any more customers!”
“Ozzie…” I began, but
Eddie cleared his throat and sat up in Penguin’s face -
“Customers like Joker,
Harley and Ivy?! What do you call a birdbrain club owner that can’t see the
tip of his own nose?”
He shook his finger at
Penguin and for a moment I thought he was going to poke him in the
aforementioned beak.
“Listen, Oswald, you
ODD PARTI IN GAOL, if we allow you into our confidence, you will have to
keep it. Trust us, we’re—Listen to me, I sound like Dent.” He coughed
“-Selina and I are not involved in any plot with Jonathan Crane, of all
people. What do you take us for? We are trying to put a plug in this mess
for everyone’s sake. So if you’re in, you’re in on our side, and you’re
agreeing to help us, understood?”
Oswald chewed on his
cigar filter, eyeing us shrewdly. Then he gave a wide grin, and a quacking
chortle. “Very well, o perfidious purveyor of puzzles. Let’s hear it.”
Eddie looked at
me, and took a deep breath.
While it is said that
some become vampire by the accumulation of their earthly sins, others are
created solely by death from the bite of another Nosferatu; thus this unholy
curse may be spread unto even the innocent. This presents a dilemma of
logic; if this creature has in his origin a religious aversion, as it has
been seen, indeed a repulsion to all things sanctified and of Christ, why is
it that he can pass damnation unto a hapless victim, that even the honest
man, the faithful virgin, and the blameless child may become a
blood-thirsting monster of Satan?
Nightwing and Robin
were to perform a sweep of the hospitals and attempt to seal the rooms of
the plague patients from entry by Dracula’s offspring, unnoticed by the
hospital staff. This was made harder by the sheer volume of patients; but
made easier by the staff having clumped most of them together in the same
wards, doing their best to isolate them lest plague-fleas spread to the
other patients. Thirteen hospitals with garlic-smeared windows and tiny
crucifixes hung over the doors later, the two found themselves at Gotham
General, with no vampires in sight.
“You’d think we’d have
caught at least one by now.” Tim huffed, perched against the outer
windowsill of an empty hospital room.
One sill over, Dick
laughed. “You’re excited? I thought you’d be scared.”
“Kinda a bit of both.”
Tim admitted, shaking his head. “I mean, vampires – crazy people I can
handle, we do that all the time. Even mutant plant monsters. I mean, that’s
weird as hell, but –“
“But there’s something
about the idea of a dead person up and running around biting people that
feels really off, huh?”
“I’m not scared of the
movies.” Tim added defensively. “It’s just…it’s a bit different when it’s
real.”
“I hear you, bro.”
A few minutes passed
in silence. Tim, fidgeting, broke it again, whispering across the chill air
between them.
“I just kinda want to
see one. You know. I mean, what do they look like? Do they have those
scrunched-up foreheads, like on Buffy?”
“Doubt it. Sure we’ll
get the chance soon. Just keep a lookout for anything suspicious.”
“What, like that?” Tim
pointed, and Dick followed his finger to a bizarre shimmering in the air
below. An arcane symbol etched itself across the alley wall behind their
hospital; it was at an angle where nobody who wasn’t perched on the
hospital windowsill would be able to see. Six feet in diameter and
smouldering, then the wall rippled like the surface of a pond, and through
it stepped a tall man in a long coat.
“What the-” Dick
stared, but it registered after a moment – "Ah. Jason Blood.”
“The demonologist guy?
What’s he doing?”
“Demonologising,
probably.” They watched him step by the road, surveying the building like a
construction foreman for a long moment before leaning down to pour something
out of a small bag onto the sidewalk, drawing a line around the front
façade. “It’s best not to ask.”
Tim felt a strange
little shudder. He was watching a real wizard cast real magic right in front
of him. “Glad he’s on our side.”
“Yeah, when his better
half is in control at least.”
Jason looked up, and
spotted them; how he know just where to look was anyone’s guess. He was far
away, but the two men were suddenly thrust into the experience of hearing
the sorcerer’s voice echoing around as if he were standing right in front of
them.
:::That is an
unfortunate truth, Mr Grayson. Mr Drake. I hope you won’t be as upset as
Etrigan was that I’ve been following your trail of garlic and crosses across
Gotham.:::
“Not
at all,” Dick replied, sharing a glance with Tim before returning his gaze
to the distant man, wanting to make some clever quip about Ventriloquists
and dummies but finding nothing springing to mind.
:::I’ve been
augmenting your wards with some of my own, and filling in a few spots you
may have missed. I’ve made an unpleasant discovery; Dracula’s forces have
been bedding down in different spots each night and are now gathered
together and headed straight toward us.:::
“Guess you’ll get to
see your vampire soon, Tim.”
:::Chances are, you
already have. Because when the fully-Undead vampires get here, their
proximity will ‘awaken’ anyone inside this hospital who may already have
been bitten over previous nights, and call them to… join the pack, so to
speak.:::
“What?” Tim and Dick
exclaimed at once.
:::Gentlemen, I cannot
claim the right to command you in battle as does Batman. But due to our
current circumstances, I must solemnly request that you yield to my
leadership for the moment. Will you accept?:::
Both came to the swift
conclusion that when a ravening pack of vampires is bearing down on you and
immortal demon-hunting wizard offers to take charge of things, it’s best to
just say-
“Sure, you got it.”
:::Thank you. Then it
is your task to ensure that none of the patients inside leave this
hospital, nor, should they become awakened to vampirism, attack anyone else. I do not need to tell you that nonlethal methods are preferable to subdue
them. I shall do my best to hold the others out here and repel the
invasion.:::
They heard the
rustling of the wind through the trees of the small park opposite the
hospital pick up. In the dark they could see nothing coming, but there
seemed to be movement in the foliage. Jason Blood turned back to face the
road, standing in front of the hospital doors and staring out.
Eight people were
suddenly standing across the road from him. They were dressed normally, but
stood deadly-silent, too still to be alive. Not speaking, not moving, not
breathing. Their faces were colorless and expressionless in the moonlight.
“Here we go.” Tim
whispered to Dick, and the two of them without another word pulled the
hospital window open, slipped into the empty room beyond, and drew their
Batarangs.
Within a few
minutes, the hospital stakeout would become a siege.
It is my conclusion
that the spirit inhabiting the vampire be not the soul of the original
person, but instead a demon and servant of darkness that has stolen the
corpse to wear, as a man wears a shroud of cloth to disguise him self
true. Yet this hypothesis requires proof, and has its flaws, for in my
attendance at many sites of vampire attack and of the ritual of vampire
destruction I have attended, I have learned that the vampire exhibits
curious familiarity with the memories of the deceased he appears to be.
Two-Face left the
Iceberg in a grouchy mood; since his return to crime, he’d not had the
opportunity to pull off anything truly spectacular, and once the
Iceberg’s triumphant re-welcoming had died down, everything had returned
to business-as-usual.
Except that
tonight, Selina Kyle, one of Harvey’s closest remaining friends, had
come into the ‘Berg, walked right past him and gone straight to Edward
Nigma without so much as a ‘hi’.
Was she still
smarting from that double-bladed knife in the arm?
In the old days, a
few injuries between friends – and fellow crooks – were par for the
course, no hard feelings. Something had changed, recently, and he
couldn’t put his finger on it. Regardless, the Iceberg was suddenly not
the place Harvey or Two-Face wanted to be, and they’d left
without so much as a coin-toss to decide if they should’ve.
“Hiya there,
Twofers.”
He would have
recognized Harley Quinn’s voice from half a mile away while blindfolded. Short of, say, Lucille Ball, or maybe Fran Drescher, there was no other
voice like it. But when he saw her, he had to double-doubletake.
“Nice dress.”
Two-Face growled, pulling up his side of Harvey’s shocked expression in
a wicked grin. “Little …looser than your usual, but we can’t complain
about the neckline.” They checked. “Or the legs.”
“Maybe I just felt
the winds of change, blowin’ across me.” Harley breathed in her best
Marilyn, looking around for an appropriate grill vent to stand over. Unfortunately, her slinky red dress was too tight around the legs for
the desired effect. She decided on the Veronica Lake approach, brushed
her hair over one eye and swayed out of the shadows to imaginary
saxophone music. “Little early for a handsome glass-and-two-halves like
you to be leavin’ the bar, ain’t it Harv?”
“Maybe we're
lookin’ for an after-party,” he replied warily. In one half of his
brain, about two dozen Two-Face fantasies long forgotten suddenly sprang
back to life; in the other, Harvey Dent was watching the shadows for
signs of her maniacal, grinning boyfriend, and trying to read her like
he’d read a hostile witness for signs that she might be about to make
him the butt of one of the Happy Couple’s pranks.
“Party for two…”
She eyed him up and down, about as subtle as a speeding Mack Truck with
a dead guy behind the wheel and a brick on the accelerator. “…or can we
make it three?” A sultry wink.
“Long as it isn’t
four.” Normally he’d find the even number a lot more palatable. But while Two-Face was a horn-dog, he wasn’t stupid. Harley Quinn, out
of makeup, dolled up like a gangster’s moll, hitting on him like a femme
fatale on a deadbeat P.I in a bad dime-bin noir novel, and no sign of
the Joker? It set off alarm bells on both sides of the mind.
“Naw.” She winked
at them both again and took his hand. “I promise, our little secret. Just between the two of you and little ol’ me.” She glanced to a
back-alley leading away from the Iceberg, away from prying, drunken
Rogue-eyes…
Harvey resisted. Everything about this screamed 'giant neon sign reading DANGER' to him. Two-Face, laughing, barked in his mind that he’d always wanted to
‘bone the Joker’s broad right under his pointy nose’ and he could
take whatever the clown tried to dish out. It’d be worth it. There was
only one way to settle this.
Harley grinned
sweetly as the coin flashed and fell.
Scarred up. She
tugged his arm again and he followed her into the alleyway.
A soundless shadow
flitted after them.
His first prey are
inevitably the family and loved ones of the person who has become the
nosferatu. He performs his nightly ritual exactly the same way each time,
without fail; the only variable is the victim, but until he has exhausted
and slain his current prey, the vampire will not move on to another, thus
creating a pattern of victims in a village succumbing to the mysterious
illness, resembling consumption or another wasting infection, one by one.
Mr Kittlemeier dusted
off his palms, scrutinizing the 12-gauge, pump-action parasol lying on his
desk. For ‘personal defense’ and ‘sports-shooting, kwak’, Herr Cobblepot had
said, but both of them knew it was a formality. The repairs would be simple
enough – it wasn’t like the days when that particular client was an
active criminal mastermind and he had to regularly pluck a smoldering
batarang he had also made out of various parasols and such. A pity in a way;
Herr Cobblepot had always paid extremely well.
Kittlemeier
tisked, and glanced at his clock. His evening’s next appointment would
be arriving within minutes. A newcomer, though the referrals had been
clear. He did not yet know the new client, nor his order, but he trusted
the stranger knew enough from his referrers to abide by Mr Kittlemeier’s
rules right away.
He moved to the
front room, leaving the umbrella on his workbench. He glanced at the clock – precisely on time. The fellow had better not
keep him waiting.
“Herr Kittlemeier.”
The voice made him jump; he saw the tall silhouette a half-second later. The man in black had already been there when he came in.
Adjusting his
glasses and clearing his throat, the old man looked up at his new
client. “Yes, yes, you are being on time, it is gud, gud. Shall we to
business? I have a very busy schedule, you understand, very busy.” He
didn’t, tonight, but it was good business practice to always be
busy whether one truly was or not.
The man smiled,
and then spoke – in excellent, if old-fashioned German. “It is an honor,
mein Herr, to make your acquaintance. I trust that my request will be
easily within your abilities. Here are the designs, to be crafted
exactly as specified.”
He gave a
courteous bow, and passed Kittlemeier a set of sketches; the famed
gadgeteer darted his eyes about them for a moment before looking up at
his guest, with one brow perked.
“Begging your
pardon, but for something so simple, could you not have gone to a
tailor?” Kittlemeier glanced at the designs again, and held back a
snort. He was almost insulted. “Or even to a Halloween costume shop…”
A thin smile from
the stranger. “No, my good friend. Your special touch is absolutely
required for this task, and your services came very highly recommended.”
The man leaned closer, and Kittlemeier noticed the sharp nails on his
folded fingers. “I will accept no lesser substitute.”
Kittlemeier
sighed, and opened his ledger, flicking through the pages to record the
new commission. “Very well. Under what name should I be placing this
order, hmm?”
“I should think
that you already know.”
Kittelemeier
furrowed his brows, and began to speak again – when he caught himself
staring at the polished silver tray that habitually rested next to the
bell. He would often surreptitiously watch the expressions of his
clients in it as he pretended to fussily ignore them.
But all he could
see where the man should have been was an empty doorframe. He cast no
reflection whatsoever.
“Mein Gott…”
Kittlemeier whispered. “It’s you.”
“I shall return at
dusk to-morrow.” Dracula replied, touching his fingers to his brow
graciously. “Good night, my dear friend, and good luck.”
Then he was gone,
and Kittelemeier was left with the blueprints clutched in trembling
hands.
He mopped his
brow, shook his head, and returned to the workshop.
The psychology of such
a creature is startling. Everything is inverted in the mind of the vampire;
that which was loved becomes hated, day becomes as night and night as day. It is bound to these cycles and habits, unbreakably, not simply the
oft-discussed need to sleep in its own grave-earth, but also its hunting
territories, its movement patterns. If trapped the creature will – indeed,
it must – pursue the most immediate and direct means of escape, and thus
despite all of its dark powers it may be outwitted and destroyed by mortal
men.
Halfway across
Gotham, Batman lowered the night-scope binoculars and narrowed his eyes
at the sign he had just read. Schroedinger’s Antiques hung above
the boarded-up door to a dilapidated shopfront. Just another condemned
building the overworked Gotham urban-renewal board had forgotten to
bring down; it had been out of business for years. It was his first lead
in the hunt for Dracula’s earth-boxes, and he’d stumbled on it by
complete chance.
After a fruitless
early evening, he had returned to an old patrol route on a hunch, and
found a small pile of dark soil, very different to the familiar brown
Gotham clay, spilled on the sidewalk near the antique store’s former
loading zone. A quick comparison to the soil sample he had taken from
the docks confirmed the match and a visit to a snitch who lived three
blocks away told him that a two-bit black market courier named Left-Hand
Luke had delivered a small industrial crate via a pickup truck to the
rear of the abandoned antiques store, something the snitch had thought
odd since the place had been condemned for at least eight years.
He knew Luke well. He was a former Penguin contractor, someone you called when you wanted
goods transported quietly and untraceably, and FedEx just wasn’t going
to cut it. He also knew that as good as he was at covering up any
papertrail the moving of goods might generate, Luke was not a hardened
criminal, and he'd squeal like a leaky tap for the Batman. But that
would come later.
He entered the
antique store, and it took him less than five minutes to find the box. It had been dragged across the floor by Luke’s deft left hand. The marks
left by the size of the box and the dusty environment were easy enough
for Batman to follow to the concealed trapdoor. Below, he found the box,
in a cramped basement filled with a stale, nauseous grave-stench that
did not belong there.
Clearly, Dracula
had been using this lair.
As he pried open
the lid, he was not surprised to find that Count Dracula had not
resorted to the usual assortment of spring-loaded poisoned needles or
hair-trigger explosives a native Gotham rogue might seal a box with.
He was, however,
confronted with an instant, squeaking, writhing mass of black plague
rats, pouring out of the box - and then out of every crevice in the
basement, filling it up with chittering bodies.
A puff of
irritant spray drove them squealing away; but Batman suspected Dracula
would soon know that the first of his soil-hotels had been found.
Good. It was
exactly what Batman wanted.
He gave a tiny
smirk not even the rats would see, and began to dismantle and consecrate
the lair, exactly as Van Helsing’s diary had suggested. There were
aspects of the ritual he would be unable to complete, as he was not
exactly an ordained priest…
But it would be
enough. One down, twenty three to go.
These all suggest
that it has not the mental faculties of a living man of sound and full mind. It may imitate the speech and action of the person it had been, but inside
it has only the primitive mentality of an animal. Such mimicry is no
indication of intellect. It is as that of the dog or the parrot, copying
what it has received – in this case from the memories imprinted in the dead
brain of its host – it lives in the past, just as a ghost which haunts the
same place, incapable of new or original thought.
“One down!” Robin
shouted, quickly hogtying the man – the vampire – he had just paralyzed with
a garlic-essence-laced tranquilizer dart. He hoped the tensile rope,
designed to hold the likes of Killer Croc, would hold. “How many to go?”
“You tell me bro!”
Nightwing ducked a clumsy but savage swipe from a woman who had only
moments ago been confined to a hospital bed. She gave a hiss, twisted
her face into a nightmarish sneer and leapt vertically upward, clinging
to the ceiling like a lizard for a few moments before the dart thudded
into her shoulder and she fell at Nightwing’s feet. “This wing’s clear,
secure it, I’m heading onward.” And he was running down the corridor to
the next ward.
“Roger!” Tim,
breathing hard, glanced back to the ward. Sweat ran down his face. These
things were fast, even the newly-awakened ones, and while they
were wild combatants
and no match for trained martial artists like Robin and Nightwing,
they’d fast learned that the vampires hit like a freight train and it
was preferable never to let them land a blow. It’d taken them a
lot more effort to get a clear shot to bring two of the ‘awakened’
within the hospital down than it would have to K.O a room full of Joker
mooks. He wondered how Mr Blood was faring outside.
The other plague
sufferers in the ward looked terrified, and Tim tried his best to
reassure the frightened patients. But what the hell was he supposed to
say?
“Listen,” he
began, after tying up the second vampire. “Just stay in your beds, we’ve
got this handled, whatever you do just stay calm and do not
attempt to leave the hospit-NO!”
One man, eyes wide
with terror, had flung open one of the windows, breaking the cross that
Tim had fastened to the outside pane, and was struggling to climb out.
The moment he
crossed the threshold, before Tim could reach him, something snaked out
of nowhere and wrapped around his midsection, like a black,
thorn-encrusted tentacle. He gave a horrified shriek and was yanked out
the window into the dark.
“Everyone
down-oof!” Tim barely had the time to shout that and ready his batarang
before a mass of writhing tendrils burst in through the window, splayed
out over the hospital beds like some kind of demented spiderweb, and
trapped the screaming patients beneath them. One of them hooked Tim
around the ankle and flung him down the corridor Dick had run into.
He slid across the
floor, dazed, looking up to see a slinky, silhouetted figure borne in
through the window on a mass of thorn-encrusted – vines – endowed with
snapping, toothy jaws. He saw the gleam of her red eyes a moment before
he heard the familiar, sultry voice, echoing with new and terrifying
malice.
“Hello, little
bird…” Poison Ivy smiled with sharpened canines, and the scent of dark,
ripe roses filled the room – musky, sweet and tainted with death. “…is
that your heart I hear pounding?”
“Oh crap.” Tim
whispered.
It is thusly in
this, not in its vulnerability to artifacts of faith or of superstition,
that the vampire’s greatest weakness lies, for it has been deprived of the
greatest gift of God to His child, Mankind, that which does not lie in the
power of the Devil to give; the vampire has no free will.
Harley ran her finger
up Two-Face's lapel and watched him through half-lidded eyes.
"Poor Harv..." She
murmured. "Yanno, I never could figure out how someone with two people in
his head could seem so lonely...but now I'm all on my lonesome too, I
understand. They don't really appreciate you."
Harvey's hand twitched
for the coin, feeling a sense of unease rising as surely as something else
might be if Harley continued to press against him like this. She was wearing
a subtler perfume than usual, and it invaded his nostrils and teased at his
senses; Two-Face's instincts were taking over in response, and Dent feared
soon there'd be nothing he could do to stop Darth Duality from charging
recklessly into a very ill-advised affair. He had to pull his trump card,
and fast.
"Harley-" He started,
gripping her wrists - "What's Pam gonna think if we do this?"
Harley stopped, and
looked up at him with large, doe-like eyes. "Red doesn't appreciate you
either, poor, poor Harvey. She shouldn'a let you go. If it'd been me, I
would never have. I'm loyal...I always try to make things fun...I always
tried to...I never asked anything of him....cept a little affection...I
never..."
She broke down,
abruptly, into tears and buried her face in his collar, sobbing and blowing
her nose on his lapel - Two-Face grunted in disgust, but Harvey's softer
sensibilities took pause.
"There there, Quinn."
He patted her back awkwardly, stroking her hair like she was an overgrown
kitten in a mood. "It's all right, Joker's not here, we're here, we won't
hurt you." Unless it comes up scarred, or you turn out to like it rough.
Shut up, Face.
"Oh Harv!" She bawled,
clinging to him, "You're always such a good friend..." What? When did we
get to be 'close'? "-Friends - whatever - you don't deserve to be
treated badly..."
"Look." It was weird
enough that Harvey's patience lapsed, and Two-Face finally got his two cents
in - "Enough with the small talk, are we gonna do it, or not?"
The tears ceased
instantly, and she smiled up at him and started crawling up his chest. "Sure
thing, hot stuff. Just lemme...kiss...that handsome...face."
She tilted his head
until the scarred side was facing her, pandering to Two-Face's ego, turning
him on by paying him attention instead of the side that still looked like
Apollo Dent. She let him tilt his head back, ran her hand over his throat,
and found the jugular with her fingertips in the guise of caressing him.
Just like Mistah D. said. Even under the thick scar-tissue, it pulsed with life.
"Just a little kiss."
She crept hungrily closer, and he never saw the look -
Until something flew
out of the dark, collided with Harley's flank, and sent her crashing to the
sidewalk.
"HEY-" Two-Face
snarled.
The black shape
dropped to the pavement beside him. "Face, go. Get away now."
Batgirl found a
double-barrelled pistol pointed at her head. Heavily customised, she noted,
and well-manufactured. "You better have a damn good explanation for this,
Bat-brat, or it's scarred I blow your head off, unscarred I beat you to a
pulp for interrupting us."
Cass didn't look at
him.
She looked at Harley,
watching as the girl flicked herself up onto all fours and sank into a
crouch, baring long white fangs between pretty lips twisted in rage.
"There explanation."
Two-Face stared
blankly.
Harley's face
scrunched into a red-eyed expression of demoniac fury, and she let out a
thwarted, reptilian hiss - then promptly blinked, clapped her hand over her
mouth, and let out an "EEP!" The fury lapsed into an expression of shock.
Harley Quinn
backpedalled, wide-eyed, still covering her mouth with one hand, hit the
alley wall, and scuttled up the wall, backwards, vanishing over the
edge of the rooftop.
"What the hell was that?!"
Two-Face demanded of Cass, his gun-hand trembling.
"Dunno. Maybe she surprised she make sound
like electrocuted snake. You welcome, too, by the way."
"I repeat." Harvey snarled, glaring
between Batgirl and the place where Harley Quinn had just been standing. "What the HELL is wrong with Quinn and how the hell did she just
climb a four storey building backwards with her bare hands!?"
Cassandra lifted her hand, calmly took
hold of the barrels of the gun, and pushed it down, looking Harvey in
the eye. Then she shrugged.
"There new bad guy in town. Name
Dracula." She turned to walk away, then added over her shoulder. "He
probably get Ivy too. It all Scarecrow's fault. Thought you should
know."
A grapnel shot into the fire-escape far
above, and she was gone.
Two-Face stood there for a long time,
trying to compute recent events with a mind already starting to throb
from Oswald's finest Double Malts.
"Harley hitting on us...Harley with
fangs going for our neck...Harley and ...Pam and...Dracula?"
He lifted the gun, and discharged both
barrels into the wall nearest. It cleared his head.
Tonight, he was gonna get a damn good
sleep, because tomorrow was gonna be a very long Halloween.
For Scarecrow.
To be continued…
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