One minute, the rose was as bright and fresh as ever. The next, it died right before Renee's eyes.
Seated at Tot's desk, she looked up from the Crime Bible in surprise. The diabolical tome lay open before her, revealing a grisly woodcut image of screaming victims throwing themselves into a fiery pit in the middle of a distorted cityscape. Renee had been poring over the illustration, searching for any possible Gotham landmarks, when a falling brown petal caught her attention.
What the hell?
More petals, all crinkly brown, rained down onto the open pages. She reached out for what was left of the rose, but it crumbled to dust in her hand, disintegrating like Dracula in the sunlight. The fallen petals also blackened and fell apart, faster than any natural process of decay could account for.
A shiver ran down Renee's spine. I don't understand, she thought. Isis' magic had sustained the rose for over four months now. How could that magic fail now, unless ...
"She's dead," Renee realized. "Isis is dead."
Tot and Richard looked up from their seats by the hearth. They watched somberly as she let the powdery remains of the rose trickle through her fingers. Neither of them offered any other possible explanation for the flower's freakish demise. Richard's eyes narrowed as he observed Renee's reaction to the news. He nudged Tot, who got up and left the room.
"Whatever happened," she guessed. "It can't be good." She gazed thoughtfully out the window, a worried expression upon her face. "Adam and Osiris ... what will they do now? How will they cope?"
"Find out," Richard said.
"Huh?" She turned toward her teacher. What was he suggesting?
"Go and find out," he said simply.
Tot reentered the room, bearing a bundle of clothing. Renee recognized some of her own laundry, as well as Vic's old fedora and trench coat.
"There are lots of answers to be found in Nanda Parbat, no question about it." He rose from his seat. "But none of them are going to satisfy you. Not one of them is the one you're looking for."
Tot set the bundle down on the desk. "I took the liberty of treating your normal clothes with the same reactive compound used in the coat and hat. You'll also find in your belongings a bottle of specially formulated shampoo that will likewise react to the binary gas, altering its color. The actual adhesive for the mask is now part of the ..."
"No," Renee said firmly, crossing her arms across her chest. She saw where Tot and Richard were going with this. "I'm not him. I'm not going to be him."
The old professor was visibly annoyed by her reaction. "Believe me, Ms. Montoya, I'm painfully aware of that fact."
Richard stepped between them, playing peacemaker. "Of course not. You're going to be yourself," he told Renee. He lifted Vic's hat from the desk. "That's the way it should be. That's what Sage wanted."
He faced her across the desk, his voice as calm and confident as usual. Renee eyed him skeptically, but was willing to listen to what he had to say. Go ahead, she thought dubiously Make your case.
"You saw your reflection in the cave, Renee. You saw yourself without ego, without distortion, selfless and ideal."
Without a face, you mean. "I don't know what I saw, Richard."
"Sure you do," he said with a sly grin. "It just makes you uncomfortable. It scares you." That didn't seem to bother him. "It should."
"How reassuring," she replied sarcastically, while Tot watched the discussion intently. "Is this another lesson about letting go? Cease being myself to become myself?".
"Lovely paradox," he commented. "A lot like life." ,
Big deal, she thought, still resisting the idea. "Well I don't need a mask for that."
Richard contemplated the fedora in his hands. "You're going to find, like Sage did, that some questions can only be answered by wearing a mask." He leaned forward and lightly placed the hat on her head. "Just as there are some that can only be asked when you remove one."
The brim of the hat cast a shadow over her face, hiding her features. Renee tried to imagine herself wearing the Question's trademark trench coat and mask. That's not me, she thought. As a Gotham City cop, she had worked with plenty of masked vigilantes: Batman, Robin, Catwoman, the Huntress. But she had never wanted to be one. That's Kate's scene, not mine.
She reached up to remove the hat, then hesitated. What would Vic want her to do? Why else had he spent so much time preparing her?
"Start in Kahndaq," Richard suggested. "See where that leads you."
Black Adam stood before the open balcony, looking out over the city below. His hands were clasped behind his back. Night had fallen outside. The darkened sky seemed to match his mood.
"It started raining the day she died," he said grimly, "and it has not stopped since. The people say these are her tears. They say Isis weeps not for herself nor for her brother nor even for me, but rather for all of Kahndaq and her people."
He turned to face Renee, who had just been escorted into the throne room. Water dripped from her trench coat as she removed her hat. A black armband, purchased from a street vendor, let her share in the city's mourning. I still can't believe Isis is really dead, she thought.
"She weeps," Adam continued, "because she can no longer walk among them." He inspected his visitor. "Sage is not with you."
Renee held onto Vic's hat. "He died."
Adam nodded, unsurprised by the news. "She said he would."
Turning away from Renee, he gazed out at the city once more. She joined him at the rear of the balcony. Neither of them looked at each other.
"Why are you here, Renee Montoya?"
She knew better than to place a comforting hand upon his arm. "I wanted to see if there was anything I could do."
"You?" His voice took on a bitter edge. His expression darkened.
Renee understood that she was taking a serious risk here. An angry Black Adam was a dangerous Black Adam, and he had never exactly been the president of her fan club. But somebody had to talk to him, before he took his pain and fury out on the rest of the world. "I know what it's like to lose the people you love." She looked him squarely in the eye. "To have the world turn on you for no reason."
"You know nothing." he spat.
"Almost nothing, sure," she conceded. "But I know about this. I know about the guilt and self-loathing at being the one who survived. I know the rage at not having been able to prevent what happened."
He snarled in warning. His fists clenched at his sides, and Renee remembered the last time she had faced a pissed-off Black Adam, when he'd caught her lolling in bed with that local girl. At the time, she had goaded him recklessly, not caring what happened to her, but this was different. She didn't want to provoke Adam. She wanted to help him. Whether he wants me to or not.
"And I know the shame that comes from believing you've failed those most important to you...."
Black Adam grabbed onto her by her face. His fingers, which were capable of ripping her head from her shoulders, dug into her cheeks. "You have always presumed too much," he growled. "Now you presume a friendship that does not exist."
“Isis was my friend," she insisted, only too aware that she could be only moments away from death herself. When Black Adam lost his temper, people tended to get dismembered.
But he merely tossed her aside. Skidding across the floor on her butt, Renee realized that she had gotten off easy. Adam was seriously restraining himself.
"And it is in her memory that I will allow you to leave here alive," he said. "I do not require your help, and I do not want your pity." His feet lifted off from the floor, so that he hovered in the air above Renee. It was only a matter of inches, but that short space seemed to define an unbridgeable gulf between them. "Look to your own affairs, and leave me to attend to mine." He peered down at the mortal woman as she got up off the floor. An icy cold rage seemed to emanate from him, chilling Renee to the bone. "The last of the Four Horsemen who murdered my wife and brother has fled to Bialya, where he has been given aid and comfort by the government. A government bought by Intergang, much as they tried to buy their way into Kahndaq."
He floated out over the balcony. "But Intergang has other targets, do they not?" He glanced back over his shoulder at his unwanted guest. "Isn't it time you went home, Renee Montoya?"
With that, he launched himself into sky.
Renee was suddenly very glad that she wasn't in Bialya.
BIALYA.
"This is a betrayal, Mister Mannheim!"
Colonel Sumaan Harjvati, President-for-Life of the glorious nation of Bialya, railed at the enormous flat screen monitor taking up one entire wall of the presidential war room. Epaulets and medals adorned Harjvati's khaki military uniform. A thick black beard sprouted from his florid features. An automatic pistol was holstered to his hip. Aides, advisors, and generals clustered around the spacious chamber, whispering nervously amongst themselves. Harjvati shook his fist at the screen.
"I'd choose your words carefully, Mr. President." Bruno Mannheim, live from Gotham City, glowered from the jumbo-sized screen. Smaller monitors, situated around the room, ran TV coverage of the funeral services in Kahndaq. Captain Marvel and the rest of the Marvel Family could be seen serving as pallbearers for Isis and Osiris.
Harjvati ignored the ganglord's warning. "Our whole nation embraced your religion of crime, your new world order! You said it was prophesy, and that Bialya's role in deploying your Four Horsemen would remain secret!"
He pointed an irate finger at the looming figure of Azraeuz, who was lurking at the rear of the room, glaring ominously at all assembled. The last of the Horsemen still bore the scars of his battle with Black Adam. Scorch marks defaced his armor. The tips of his wings were singed. Armed soldiers, members of Bialya's elite Sovereign Guard, kept their weapons trained on the unearthly apparition, while trying hard not to look Azraeuz in the eyes.
"Why has Death arrived at our doorstep, Mister Mannheim? Why does he hover over us in silence?" Perspiration beaded upon his balding dome. "Is this part of your prophesy too?"
On the screen, Mannheim looked distinctly unsympathetic to Harjvati's plight. A massive map of Gotham City occupied the wall behind him. A circle had been drawn in the center of the map, over the very heart of the city. Harjvati didn't even want to know what that signified. Gotham is Mannheim's territory, he thought. All I care about is my own country!
"Prophesy's a funny thing, Mister President," Mannheim said with a smirk. "You tried contacting Dr. Sivana?"
Of course I did! Harjvati thought. "The Oolong Complex is refusing all incoming communications. They appear to be in lockdown!"
"Then it looks like you've got a problem." Mannheim glanced at his watch. "Especially since the funeral services in Kahndaq just ended."
Harjvati knew what that meant. "Black Adam will be on his way here." More sweat streamed from his pores. He dabbed frantically at the perspiration with a monogrammed silk handkerchief. "You must help us! My army won't be enough!"
"That's what I'm trying to say," Mannheim said. He casually lit a cigar and blew smoke at the screen. "Nice knowin' ya."
The screen went blank as Mannheim abruptly cut off the transmission. Traitor! Harjvati thought. Turncoat! He opened his mouth to demand that contact with Gotham be restored. "Get me—"
Black Adam flew through the screen, exploding out of the heavily fortified walls of the wrar room. A high-pitched shriek escaped Harjvati's lungs as he ducked beneath the flying debris. Generals, soldiers, and terrified cabinet members dived for cover. Azraeuz screeched like a wild animal as he retreated via the rear exit. The Horseman's fearsome scythe cut a bloody path through any soldiers unlucky enough to get in his way. Gunfire ricocheted harmlessly off Death's scorched armor.
No! Harjvati thought. This isn't fair! He wished that he had never heard of Intergang, let alone accepted their bribes and support. What was the good of being President-for-Life when that life could be cut short in an instant? I have to get out of here!
A powerful hand grabbed onto the dictator's neck, lifting of him from the floor. His feet dangled in the air as he found himself face-to-face with Black Adam. The other man's saturnine features were as hard and unyielding as the pyramids. Iron fingers tightened around Harjvati's throat.
"The Four Horsemen did not come from Bialya!" Harjvati lied desperately. He tried to pry himself free from Black Adam's grip, but not even a crowbar would have sufficed. "I beg of you! Mercy!"
Black Adam's implacable black eyes were those of an executioner. "This is mercy," he declared. "It will be quick."
He hurled Harjvati up at the ceiling, where the dictator's head splattered like a soft piece of fruit.
Fragments of skull and brain clung to the ceiling even after Sumaan Harjvati's lifeless body hit the floor. But pulping the buffoonish president provided Black Adam with little satisfaction. Harjvati had been nothing but a pawn in Intergang's ruthless play for world domination. Isis' true killers lay elsewhere.
No matter, Adam thought. They shall not escape my justice. Bullets bounced off his face and chest as Bialya's Sovereign Guard sought to avenge their leader. A grenade exploded uselessly at his feet. His fists clenched, he flew straight into the midst of the soldiers. And all who oppose me will suffer the same fate.. . .
Moments later, he burst through the walls of the presidential fortress out into the open square beyond. Fresh blood soaked Black Adam's sacred garb, which remained unmarred by the feeble efforts of Harjvati's defenders. To the military forces stationed outside the palace he looked like some bloodthirsty afreet out of their childhood nightmares.
An entire battalion of tanks and missile launchers awaited Black Adam, nor were these decrepit Cold War relics; Intergang's generous support had allowed Bialya to upgrade its armed forces significantly. Over a dozen state-of-the-art LuthorCorp battle cruisers, complete with spent-uranium armor, were pitted against a single unarmed man. Laser targeting beams swept over his body.
Black Adam sneered in contempt.
Without pausing for an instant, he plowed right through the row of tanks. One after another, the armored vehicles exploded from within. Tank guns and mounted artillery tried to retard his progress, but the high-explosive rounds detonated harmlessly against him. Black Adam ripped one tank in half, causing it to blow up, before flying onto the next. Choking black smoke soon filled the square. A panicked general urged his troops onward. The braver of his soldiers fired wildly at Black Adam; many others fled in terror from their immortal foe. Flying shrapnel posed a threat to everyone except Adam.
"Where is the Horseman?" the general cried out in frustration. Mere mortals were obviously no match for Black Adam; only Intergang's inhuman creation stood a chance of stopping him. "Where is Death?"
A burning chunk of metal slammed into his body, answering his question ... at least in the abstract. The flying tank chassis killed half a dozen of his lieutenants as well. A mangled heap of steel served as their headstones.
Yes, Black Adam thought, his eyes on the lookout for Isis' murderer. Where is Death?
Frantic aides briefed Amanda Waller on the crisis.
"Echelon has picked up fresh transmissions out of southern Bialya, all within the last twenty minutes." Count Vertigo was visibly shaken by what he'd heard. His own country had been destroyed by the Spectre years ago. "It's ... it's a slaughter...."
Another voice piped up. "Checkmate and NSA satellites positively confirm Black Adam's presence in country, but whether he's responsible ..."
"The State Department has shut down our embassy in Bialya," a third voice reported. "All American personnel are to be evacuated immediately."
Too little, too late, Waller thought grimly. We should have forced a regime change there months ago. And in Kahndaq too. She sorted through the mug shots on her desk, picking out a new Suicide Squad. So far, she hadn't found anyone in custody strong enough to bring the rampaging superhuman down. I knew Black Adam was a loose cannon, and noiv he's gone off... just like I predicted.
The prison's official warden came running into her office. "I have the White House on line one," he announced shrilly. "The Pentagon is on line two."
"Hold my calls," Waller barked. "And get me the Justice Society!"
ea alya.
The fighter jet crashed into the center of a crowded bazaar.
Flames erupted within the market, consuming shops, merchants, and customers alike. The few survivors choked on the smoke as they pulled themselves across the shattered pavement. Shocked men and women called out for their loved ones. Confused children cried for their parents. The moans and screams of the dying and the injured filled the air. Blood poured across the cobblestones. Billowing black fumes hid the moon and stars.
Black Adam strode out of the heart of the blaze. A torn jet wing crunched beneath his boots. Bloody tracks charted his progress across the wreckage. His dark eyes scanned the horizon. In the distance, more jets were impaled atop the spires of wrecked skyscrapers and mosques. Fireballs spewed into the sky.
Adam didn't even know what this city's name had been. He had left the ruins of the capital far behind him and was now making his way across the entire country. The wisdom of the gods might have informed him of his precise location, but Adam didn't care enough to listen. All of Bialya would pay for sheltering the Horsemen. Let others make a list of the dead.
I have had my share of burials, he thought. And more.
He paused for a moment, his unquenchable rage ebbing slightly. An overturned flower cart, now being devoured by blossoms of bright orange flame, lay directly in his path. A single yellow rose floated in a crimson puddle, its delicate petals soaking up the blood. The fragile flower reminded him of all he had lost.
. Isis . . .
He knelt down beside the puddle and plucked the rose from the blood. For a second, sorrow unmanned him and a solitary tear leaked from his cheek. There had been a time, not so long ago, when he had finally found true happiness.
A bottle smashed against the back of his head, disturbing his grief. "Murderer!" an hysterical voice cried out. "Demon!" .
Black Adam rose to find a mob of vengeful Bialyans advancing on him. The crazed civilians were obviously possessed of more fury than sense. They brandished knives, clubs, handguns, and rifles as they sought to stamp out the menace in their midst. Shots rang out. Lead bullets flattened themselves against his impervious flesh. Their lust for revenge reminded Adam of his own.
"Avenge us...."
So Isis had beseeched him as she had lain dying in his arms. He would not deny his wife her last request. No power on Earth could stop him, let alone this pathetic mob.
"You!" he accused the ungrateful rabble. Isis had devoted her life to saving the world's people, and look how they had repaid her. The spirits of Osiris, Shiruta, Gon, and Hurut joined Isis inside his skull, crying out for justice. "You took them away again. You took them all away!"
He crushed the bloody flower in his hand.
"Where is the Horseman?" He flung himself into the crowd, determined to wrest the truth from them even if he had to take every man and woman apart one by one. "Where is Death?"
A bloody crimson haze descended over his vision.
All he saw was red.
MANHATTAN.
"Containment?" Power Girl exclaimed. "Are they out of their minds?"
Before the Justice League, there was the Justice Society of America, Earth's original super hero team. Now composed of gray-haired veterans and their younger proteges, the JSA was ready to take on any threat to world peace, especially when the League was not available.
Like now, for instance. The so-called Infinite Crisis had left the League in disarray. Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were all MIA, while their various teammates were either missing as well, or coping with the fallout from the Crisis. Hal Jordan, John Stewart, and Earth's other Green Lanterns were all off in space, on peacekeeping missions throughout the galaxy. Hawkman and Supergirl had been lost in space during the Rann-Thanagar War. Aquaman was busy rebuilding Atlantis. Bart Allen, the youngest surviving Flash, was still recovering from his battle with that evil Superboy from another dimension. Martian Manhunter was reputed to be on a top secret undercover mission....
So it's up to us, Alan Scott thought. Earth's first Green Lantern, he presided over the tense meeting taking place in the JS A's Manhattan headquarters. His teammates—Flash, Wildcat, Hourman, Stargirl, Mister Terrific, Doctor Mid-Nite, and Power Girl—were gathered around the marble round table in their conference room. They looked worried, but ready to go. As soon as the UN gives us the go-ahead. '
"We're told that the Security Council will have a further decision within the hour," he informed the team. Black Adam's status as a foreign leader, not to mention his Freed om-of-Power treaties with various hostile nations, made this whole situation politically dicey. No one wanted to start World War III....
But Adam might not give us a choice.
That wasn't good enough for Power Girl. She paced restlessly on the other side of the table, too worked up to sit still. The buxom blonde heroine's fiery temper matched her heat-vision. Her eyes flared as brightly as the red sun of her native Krypton. "There won't be a Bialya in an hour!"
"Believe me, Karen," Green Lantern said. "We know that better than anyone."
Emerald flames flashed within his power ring.
An airport smoldered in the distance. Toppled skyscrapers jutted at odd angles, like gigantic works of modern art. A crashed 747 had been ripped asunder, spilling its human cargo out onto the rubble. Still bodies littered the streets. Broken glass glinted amidst the shattered steel and concrete. Garbage rotted along with the corpses. Countless fires ate away at the foundations of the ruined buildings. The crash of falling timbers and beams occasionally disturbed the sepulchral silence of the murdered country Screams and gunfire no longer echoed in the night. There was only the crackle of the flames, and the keening of the wind as it passed through the broken buildings. Bialya had become a ghost town, inhabited by only a single restless spirit.
Black Adam wandered through the wasteland, dazed and muttering to himself. The bodies of his victims were strewn in every direction. Scarlet rivers flowed into the sewers beneath whatever city this was. His knuckles were caked with blood.
"Where ... are ... you?” His eyes searched fruitlessly for his prey. He had been fighting and killing for what felt like an eternity now, and yet the last of the Horsemen continued to elude him. Frustration overcame him and he rocketed through an empty high-rise with such force that the entire building flew apart. "WHERE ARE YOU?"
The remains of the skyscraper crashed to earth, raising a huge cloud of pulverized concrete. Black Adam hovered hundreds of feet above the wreckage. His shoulders sagged and he cradled his face in his bloody hands. He could not rest until he had slain his wife's killer, but how much longer must he search? He should have never let Azraeuz escape Kahndaq in the first place. I should have made certain he was dead before.
The cawing of birds came from somewhere overhead. Surprised by the sound, he lifted his gaze and beheld scores of vultures and crows circling in the air above him. As he watched in morbid fascination, they descended and began feeding on the corpses populating the streets below. He rose higher and saw that yet more scavengers were coming to join in the feast. Indeed, it seemed as though the eaters of carrion were circling above the entire nation. All of Bialya had become a meal for them.
And flapping amongst the vultures, his great black wings spread out behind him, Azraeuz presided over the banquet. His lethal scythe sliced through the smoke rising up from the ruins as the fourth and final Horseman spoke at last.
"With every murder. . . with, the death of every man, woman, and child ... I have grown stronger."
He swooped down out of the sky, tackling Adam in midair, and sending them both crashing toward the earth. The force of their landing dug a deep trench across what, ironically enough, appeared to be an abandoned cemetery. They slammed into a string of granite headstones, smashing the weathered markers into dust. Rotting coffins and skeletons were uprooted and tossed about. The pungent reek of Death filled Black Adam's nostrils. Squawking vultures scattered in alarm.
"All thanks to you," Azraeuz gloated. His voice was like the rattle of dry bones as he rose from the freshly furrowed trench and swung his scythe at Black Adam. The edge of the blade slashed across Adam's chest, drawing blood. "I knew you would bring your unreasoning rage here. You were certain to give into it without that female meat at your side, whispering her sentimental platitudes into your ear." The scythe whistled through the dusty air. "I knew you would feed me with spilled blood and stopped hearts." He raised the scythe high, preparing to separate Adam's head from his shoulders. "Now I hunger for your death, mortal!"
Black Adam caught the blade with his bare hands. The razor-sharp edge sliced through his skin, making his hands slick with blood, but he did not let go. "You make false claims," Adam hissed through gritted teeth. "You are not Death." He swung the blade down and around so that it jabbed straight into Azraeuz's gut—and out through his back. "I am."
Letting go of the blade, Adam grabbed onto the Horseman and pulled him close. ■
"Shazam!"
A lightning bolt zapped down from the sky, striking both he and Azraeuz. The lightning transformed Black Adam back into his mortal guise, while electrocuting the Horseman at the same time. His body jerking spasmodically,
Azraeuz let out a howl of agony as his flesh fried upon his bones. Smoke rose from his feathered wings. The smell of burning meat supplanted the putrescent odor he usually exuded. Charred black skin flaked off his body
Teth-Adam, clad in an ancient Egyptian loincloth and headdress, savored his enemy's torment. But he was not through with the Horseman yet.
"Shazam!"
A second thunderbolt hit the pair. Azraeuz's bronze armor melted, fusing to his carbonized flesh. Still impaled upon his own scythe, which had acted as a lightning rod, attracting the mystical energy, he crashed to the ground. Viscous green tears leaked from the sockets of his skull as he whimpered in pain. Teth-Adam became Black Adam once more.
His superhuman strength restored, Adam wrested a jagged tombstone from the ground. "Now, monster, you are going to answer every question I ask."
Azraeuz attempted to crawl away, dragging himself through the damp graveyard dirt. The feathers had been burned away from his wings, leaving only the bare pinions behind. The blade of the scythe jutted up through his shoulder blades. His cloven hooves scraped against the ground.
"You are going to tell me where I can find your masters."
Black Adam drove the pointed tip of the headstone into the Horseman's back, breaking his spine. Azraeuz's charred tail twitched once, then fell limp. He reached backward, groping for the headstone, but merely sliced his fingers upon his own scythe. The scorched pinions spasmed violently.
"And then, almighty 'Death'..." Black Adam placed his hand against the back of the Horseman's head and drove his bony face into the mud. His fingers poked through the monster's skull. Embalming fluid flowed from the wounds. "I am going to spend the rest of the night slowly ending your life."
Destroying the last Horseman would not completely avenge Isis' murder. The creature's masters still had to answer for their crimes.
But it was a good start.
WEEK 46
"Red Alert!"
Crimson lights flashed and warning klaxons sounded inside the main laboratory. Panicked scientists dashed to their battle stations as the island's sensors picked up a humanoid figure zooming toward the tropical atoll at close to the speed of sound. A holographic wall monitor identified the figure as Black Adam, who had clearly discovered the origin of the Four Horsemen—and was hell-bent on revenge.
"He sterilized Bialya," Rigoro Mortis whispered, aghast. The puny scientist seemed to shrink a few inches more. "One million men, women, and children in less than twenty-four hours ..."
"Just think what he'll do to us!" Veronica Cale added. All the color drained from her exquisite features.
Only Dr. Sivana appeared untroubled by Black Adam's approach. He rubbed his hands together in fiendish anticipation. "Oh, I've been waiting for this for a long, long time. The Black Marvel himself at my mercy!" He cackled eagerly. "Bring it on!"
The other scientists gazed nervously at the oversized monitor. On the screen, Black Adam flew straight into a deluge of scalding chemicals. His silk uniform bubbled and sizzled, but he kept on flying, leaving a trail of steam behind him. His clenched fists tore through the corrosive clouds.
"He survived my acid rainstorm!" Doctor Death gasped. He lowered his gas mask, revealing pointed ears, bushy eyebrows, and a satanic goatee. He grabbed onto a fuming vial of poison like a child clutching his security blanket.
"But the Perimeter Force Shield is designed to withstand a direct asteroid strike," Baron Bug desperately reminded his colleagues, "of the sort which brought about the extinction of the dinosaurs!"
His words did little to reassure Doctor Tyme, who paced back and forth across the laboratory. The hands of his clock face spun hysterically. "How can you be so calm, Sivana?" he accused their leader. "The most dangerous living being on the planet is mere miles away from our soft, vulnerable guts." His blue cape flapped pathetically behind him. "And I still haven't found my lost fifty-two seconds!"
Talk about a cuckoo clock, Sivana thought. He counted down to Black Adam's arrival. "Five hundred miles away. Three hundred. One hundred ..."
"We're all going to die," Cale moaned. A most unflattering display of guilt compromised her beauty; rumor had it that she'd been having nightmares ever since the unveiling of the Four Horsemen. "We deserve to die*"
A tremendous sonic boom shook the lab. "The Perimeter Force Shield has shattered!" Baron Bug announced. "Black Adam is here!"
"Just give me a moment," Rigoro Mortis pleaded. His hairless dome was slick with perspiration. His hands trembled as he clumsily attempted to screw together a handheld control console that looked like a cross between a PlayStation joystick and an old-fashioned TV antenna. Loose screws slipped between his fingers. He swore in Latin as they bounced across the floor.
Sivana savored the other scientist's anxiety. "Sweating, Mortis? Now you know what it's like having the Marvels on your heels." None of these lesser lights appreciated what he had been up against all these years, "He has the power of six gods. Think about that!"
"Oh yeah!" Mortis snapped back. "Well, I'm an atheist and I have the powers of ultra-science at my disposal, in the form of the Super-Hood Mark II! The greatest killer android the world has ever seen." He finally succeeded in fitting the control device together. "He'll save us!"
He stared up at the screen, where Black Adam could be seen closing in on the island. Before Adam reached the coral ridge surrounding the atoll, however, a monstrous figure rose up from the sea below. Over fifty feet tall, the Super-Hood Mark II was a hulking artificial humanoid who bore a distinct resemblance to Boris Karloff in Frankenstein. Pasty white pseudoflesh covered its hairless cranium. A sneer occupied its brutish countenance. High-tech cannons rotated upon its arms. Swollen plastic tanks, filled with a transparent gel, bubbled upon its back. Crude stitches held its scalp together.
Doesn't look all that different from the Mark I, Sivana thought dubiously. Mortis is a real one-trick pony.
A mammoth arm aimed at Black Adam. The attached cannon sprayed the sticky gel at its target, coating Black Adam with the goo. The giant's other hand grabbed onto the immobilized immortal. Heat-rays shot from the SuperHood's sunken eyes, setting the gel ablaze. Black Adam went up in flames.
"See!" Mortis crowed, dancing excitedly. "Super-flammable liquid plastic plus thermo-vision!"
Unimpressed, Sivana leaned back against his chair and sneered. "All you're doing is making him mad." His hands were clasped behind his head. "And when he gets mad, he makes you dead."
Sure enough, Black Adam was making short work of the Super -Hood Mark II. Heedless of the red-hot flames enveloping his body, he twisted free of the android's grip, tearing off Super-Hood's right arm in the process. The dismembered giant sheared away from Black Adam as explosions erupted from his shoulder. Mortis' grotesque creation tumbled backward into the sea, disappearing beneath the waves. The android's synthetic green blood formed an oil slick atop the water.
So much for that ill-conceived monstrosity, Sivana thought smugly, even as another of the mad scientists stepped up to bat.
"Time for Baron Bug to save us all!" The crazed cyber-entomologist tapped frantically at the keypad of his remote control device. "Oh God, oh God," he muttered under his breath. "Where are my Insectrons?"
He let out a sigh of relief as a swarm of mechanical insects appeared on the screen. Buzzing furiously, the robotic bees, hornets, and wasps rushed toward Black Adam, who hurled Super-Hood's severed arm at the first wave of Insectrons. The limb exploded against the bugs, wiping out several at once. Mangled steel wings and feelers splashed down into the sea.
But Baron Bug had been very industrious during his stay at Oolong Island. Yet more Insectrons assailed Black Adam, biting and stinging every inch of his body. He slapped and swatted at them with his mighty hands, crushing them by the handful, but they threw themselves against him with suicidal determination. The largest of the Insectrons, a hawk-sized Robo-Wasp, clung to his back. A foot-long radioactive stinger stabbed repeatedly into his back.
Howling in pain, Black Adam dived toward the ocean and plunged beneath the waves. Underwater spy cameras caught him as he struggled to pull the Robo-Wasp away from his back. Intent on ridding himself of the vicious Insectron, he did not appear to see a gigantic steel Mega-Scorpion, roughly the size of a nuclear submarine, scuttling across the ocean floor toward him. Searchlights beamed from the Scorpion's glittering crystal eyes. The pilots of the manned robot could be glimpsed on the other side of the eyes.
"Attention, Mega-Scorpion crew!" Bug shouted into a microphone. "Attack at will!"
Reaching back behind him, Black Adam ripped the Robo-Wasp in half and angrily hurled away the pieces. Blood from his wounds turned the seawater red around him, but the Scorpion's high-intensity spotlights cut through the scarlet haze. Black Adam faced the oncoming creature defiantly, like some mythical Titan pitted against a primeval beast. The Scorpion's pincers snapped at him.
"Do you really think that toy of yours will stop him?" Cale mocked the Mega-Scorpion. She sounded resigned to her fate. "Black Adam killed Death, the Pale Horseman. What does that make him?"
The bone-crushing pressure of the deep di„d not slow Black Adam down. He caught hold of one of the enormous pincers with both hands and began to wrench it apart, just like he had Sobek's jaws so many days ago. The Scorpion's stinger jabbed at him, but he deflected the blows with the robot's own front claw. The pincers snapped to pieces. Sparks flashed underwater as the entire limb short-circuited. The pilots inside the cockpit drew back in terror as Black Adam launched himself straight for the vessel's glowing eyes. A cruel smile played upon his face as he drew back his fist....
"Mayday! Mayday!" the pilots screamed over the laboratory's PA system. "He sees us! He sees—" A deafening crash cut off the men's shrieks. Static, then silence, came over the loudspeakers. A hush fell over the laboratory.
"My Mega-Scorpion ..,Baron Bug whimpered. His stooped shoulders slumped in defeat.
All right, Sivana thought. Who wants to take a crack at him next?
Dr. Cyclops rose to the challenge. "Don't worry," the one-eyed scientist insisted. "He can't find the island if he can't see it." He hunched over the keyboard of his desk computer. "My unparalleled lens technology bends light all around us."
Ira Quimby strolled into the lab, looking remarkably relaxed and well-tanned. A Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda shorts, and sandals made him look more like a beachcomber than an evil scientist. "He can still smell it, and hear it, my dear doctor." He peered over Cyclops' shoulder as he contemplated the computer's display screen. "If I may contribute a suggestion, perhaps you might consider turning your null-light lenses away from the island and toward, our adversary's eyes?"
"Smart thinking, Quimby," Sivana admitted. Perhaps all that sunbathing really had boosted Ira's intellect.
Quimby grinned. "Well, they don't cail me T.Q.' for nothing." He removed his mirrored sunglasses. "Granted, we should be safe as long as the blast doors hold, but it always pays to anticipate every outcome." '
"Amen," T.O. Morrow agreed.
On the screen, Black Adam burst from the lagoon surrounding the island. The last of the burning gel had been washed aw'ay from him, but his costume was still torn and charred. He clutched a twitching steel stinger in one fist and a blackened human skull in the other. He tossed them aside with equal disdain.
With godlike swiftness, he zipped out of the range of the cameras. A second later, heavy blows pounded against the solid-steel blast doors protecting the main lab complex. Nervous scientists jumped at the ringing blows. The dense promethium alloy began to wajp inward. The impressions of powerful knuckles bulged through the metal.
"That won't stop him," Cale predicted. "Nothing can."
White-faced scientists began to scurry toward the emergency exits. Sivana opened his mouth to call them back, but Ira Quimby beat him to the punch. The mutated super-genius jumped up onto the head of an unfinished robot and attempted to rally his frightened colleagues.
"Come on now," he exhorted the various mad doctors. "Don't be scared, fellas! We've all been here before." His savvy gaze swept over the fleeing scientists, who halted their disorderly retreat long enough to hear what he had to say. "Let's face it, some of you boys look like you've been bullied all your lives."
Doctor Death nodded reluctantly, and was soon joined by most of the other mad doctors. Their expressions darkened as they recalled countless petty humiliations inflicted on them by their intellectual inferiors. Bitter resentment, never very far from the surface, began to overcome their panic at Black Adam's progress so far. Only Veronica Cale looked unconvinced by Quimby's stirring oration.
He goaded them further.
"Now the ultimate big, bad bully's right outside, knocking on the door. Do we run? Do we hide? Or do we get even?" He pumped his fist in the air. "This time, we have the weapons. We have the gang!" He shook his fist at the bulging door, even as Black Adam's titanic blows continued to reverberate throughout the lab. "This time it's our turn to kick some ass!"
Cheers and applause greeted Quimby's speech. Sivana decided that the criminal mastermind had missed his calling.
He should have gone into politics, Sivana thought.
Black Adam slammed his fists into the massive steel door before him. His knuckles bled, matching the countless burns and lacerations scarring his flesh, but the pain only stoked the murderous wrath blazing within his chest. It had taken hours to coax the secret of the Horsemen's origins from the dying Azraeuz, but the effort had been well worth it. Isis' true murderers—the architects of Kahndaq's misery—lay behind this final obstacle ... and no mere wall of steel would spare them from his justice.
Throw whatever technological trickery you have at me, he challenged his unseen foes. Your feeble science is no match for my righteous fliry.
He threw all his might into one more blow, and the "impenetrable" blast doors finally surrendered before the strength of Amon. Torn from their hinges, the doors crashed down onto the floor beyond. A harsh metallic clang echoed loudly.
Black Adam strode across the threshold into what appeared to be an enormous laboratory. Workstations divided the ground floor, while elevated metal catwalks ran along the upper walls of the facility. Armed guards and beast-men patrolled the walkways, but Adam barely gave them a glance. He was after Sivana and his diabolical cronies today, not mere foot soldiers.
I never trusted that myopic madman, Adam thought of Sivana. I should have rid the world of him years ago. .
To his slight surprise, the mad scientists stood their ground, as though daring him to venture further into their domain. He sneered at their balding craniums and stunted physiques. The information he had extracted from the Fourth Horseman, coupled with the wisdom of Zehuti, allowed him to identify them all by name. He was unimpressed by their fearsome reputations; despite their vast intellects, they were all merely mortal in the end. And he was so much more.
A few of the Scientists shrank away from him, looking ready to flee at a moment's notice. But a smirking American in beach attire, whom Adam deduced to be the notorious Ira Quimby, attempted to bolster his comrades' courage.
"Don't worry," he said confidently. "I've been thinking about this and here's how it'll go." He glanced at the scientist to his right, a freakish-looking individual with but a single eye above his nose. "Paging Dr. Cyclops."
The one-eyed scientist raised an elaborate ray gun that projected a beam of blinding black light at Adam's eyes. The world turned dark as the infernal ray stole his sight from him. Black Adam staggered forward, groping blindly with his hands. The footsteps of the scientists scattered in all directions. He snarled in frustration.
"Someone get him while he's blind!" Cyclops hollered shrilly. "Get him!"
More footsteps circled him warily. Black Adam caught a whiff of acidic fumes coming toward him. He heard liquid sloshing in a beaker. Another set of footsteps seemed to stagger beneath the weight of some heavy device. He heard the hum of motorized components powering up. He smelled ozone in the air.
"Where is he?" Doctor Tyme shouted frantically. The gears of a clock ticked where Adam estimated his face to be. "I can't see a thing out of this freaking mask!"
"Aim your Suspension Ray to the left, Doctor," Quimby advised him. "That's it."
A sensation like static electricity rushed over Black Adam's body, making every hair stand up. He tried to lunge at the ticking Tyme, but his muscles refused to move. What devilry is this? he thought angrily. He could still feel his limbs—he wasn't paralyzed—and yet he could not budge an inch, almost as though he was trapped in a single instant of time. Let me loose! he raged silently, but the words caught in his throat. By the gods, when I get free, you willpay for this indignity!
If he got free ...
Frozen in time, and blinded to boot, Black Adam was right where they wanted him. Ira Quimby nodded in approval. "Now then, we have among our number some distinguished old pros. Evil geniuses who have faced the entire Justice League single-handed." He turned toward yet another member of the Oolong Island brain trust and smiled knowingly. "Tom? Time for you to grandstand, I presume?"
T.O. Morrow rose from his seat. He put down his daiquiri and fished a slender silicon wand from his back pocket. "Ahem," he began. "Somewhere around the fifty-second century, people will learn how to unfold the hidden dimensions of space." He aimed the wand at Black Adam and flicked a switch. All the lights in the laboratory flickered and went out. Only the sunlight from outside illuminated the sprawling complex. "I invented tesseract technology when I was fifteen, gentlemen. Using this device I can open an area the size of a football field inside that invulnerable brain of his."
Tyme's Suspension, Ray shorted out, but it was no longer needed. Black Adam screamed and clutched his skull. His bloodshot eyes bulged from their sockets. Agonized cries went unheard by the gods.
"It takes a lot of power for a split second," Morrow expounded, "but it's all we need." Black Adam collapsed onto the floor. Painful spasms racked his body. Morrow clicked off his wand and the lights came back on. "Now then, gentlemen, indulge yourselves."
The other scientists ran toward the prone figure, eager to get their licks in. They gleefully kicked Adam in the face and ribs, revenging themselves on all their past persecutors, superhuman and otherwise. Doctor Death poured a beaker of acid over Adam's head. Baron Bug shoved a mechanical tarantula down his throat. Dr. Cyclops punched him in the eye.
Ira Quimby watched the beating from his perch atop the robot skull. He beckoned to the guards, who hustled down from the catwalks to take Black Adam into custody. They grabbed Adam under his shoulders and lifted his face from the floor. Quimby nodded at Veronica Cale, who came forward bearing a glittering crown of electronic circuitry. Unlike her nerdier colleagues, the glamorous female scientist had little interest in abusing their captive. She just looked relieved to be alive.
Quimby continued to provide the expert commentary.
"And now the lovely Dr. Cale will apply the Neural Crown, which will reroute all the electrical impulses his battered brain sends to his body."
He smirked as she pressed the crown down onto Black Adam's skull and activated the electrodes. Bright blue sparks arced between the silvery spikes of the crown. Black Adam stiffened in shock, then started twitching uncontrollably. His bloody eyes rolled wildly.
"It's done," she said bleakly. '
Exhausted by their efforts, the frenzied scientists backed away from their vanquished enemy. They looked at each other in amazement, as if they still couldn't believe that they had actually come out on top. Ira Quimby basked in his triumph. '
"Let's all feel a real sense of accomplishment," he urged them. "We've conquered our fears in a very real way." He stepped down from his perch and slapped a grinning Doctor Death on the back. He peered through the assembled scientists at Dr. Sivana, who came forward at last. "And dear old Thaddeus will take over from here." Quimby shrugged. "That's how I saw it working out anyway."
Sivana clapped quietly. The other scientists parted to let him through. The wizened old doctor looked around at his victorious colleagues. An insidious smile lifted his lips.
"I hate you all," Sivana said. "I want you to know that. But together we've done something I could have never achieved on my own."
He crouched over to look Black Adam in the face. A trickle of bl oody drool dripped from the defeated champion's lips. "Oh, foolish Black Adam," Sivana cackled. "You shouldn't have come here, should you? Not after all we've put you through." He gestured to the guards. "Bring him to my private laboratory," he instructed the beast-men. "And heat up my acid baths."
He rubbed his hands together.
"I've been planning for this moment for a very long time. ..."
"For I have given unto thee all the tools to bring about my desires, the same gifts used by Kiirten, Crippen, and Gacy...." .
The Cathedral of Hate, located deep beneath the city, was far grander than that underground temple in Bialya. Torchlight illuminated the wide central nave leading to the gilded sanctuary at the west end of the profane church. Carved serpents wound around the marble columns supporting the vaulted ceiling. Luridly colored frescos depicted the greatest crimes in history, from the murder of Abel to the destruction of Coast City. Life-sized statues of legendary saints and apostles, such as Rasputin and Vandal Savage, occupied recessed niches along the walls. Individual shrines paid homage to each of the Seven Deadly Sins. A choir composed of involuntary castrati sang glorious hymns to evil.
"That which is used to flense, grind, pierce, and bum ..."
Whisper A'Daire read from the Crime Bible, which was laid open on the marble pulpit before her. The illustration accompanying the text depicted an enormous fire pit opening up in the heart of a ravaged city. Doomed souls plunged into the pit, condemned to eternal torment. The grisly woodcut promised great things ahead.
"Ahhh!" An anguished cry interrupted her sermon. "Hurts ... it hurts— nhn—I don't know anything—nhngg—I've never even seen her...."
The pain-wracked moans came from the hapless Gotham police officer strapped to the altar a few feet away. The rookie's blue uniform had been reduced to shreds by the ministrations of Whisper's subhuman servitors. His abused flesh bore evidence of the torturer's craft. Beast-men capered around the bloody altar. Pincers, branding irons, flails, and other sacred implements were grasped in their claws, paws, and talons. A scorpion-man preferred to use his own stinger.
To each his own, Whisper thought.
Equally brutish congregants, representing every genus of the animal kingdom, knelt before the dais. Their feral eyes gleamed with predatory glee. The werewolf, Abbot, crouched among the first row of the worshipers.
■ "So that ye might learn the truths which are hidden, that ye might pull secrets from the very hearts that hide them ..
Reciting the verses from memory, Whisper crossed the dais to the altar. She drew an ornate dagger from a sheath between her breasts. A scarlet cloak and corset flattered her figure. Forged on unholy Apokalips itself, the blade was used only on the most sacred of occasions. She raised it high above her head, its jagged point aimed at the lacerated chest of the unwilling sacrifice.
"Please, Fm begging you...." The rookie stared in horror at the dagger poised above him. Whisper wondered if his insignificant life was already passing before his eyes. "I don't know where she is...."
Her slitted pupils dilated. A forked tongue flicked between her lips. No matter how many times she performed this rite, it never ceased to fill her heart with unholy fervor. "And so see my Kingdom rise anew upon the Earth. In Cain's name."
"I don't know Batwoman ...!"
She plunged the dagger into the policeman's heart. The congregation growled in unison.
"IN CAIN'S NAME!"
Bruno Mannheim did not turn around as Whisper and Abbot entered his office. He stared bleakly out the picture window overlooking Gotham, his Neanderthal forehead resting against the cold plate glass. "It didn't work, did it?"
Whisper used a towel to wipe the rookie's blood from her hands. She had come straight from the cathedral, not even taking the time to change out of her gore-splattered raiment. Abbot, now in human form, followed behind her, carrying the Book of Crime. She regretted being the bearer of bad news.
"We'll make a new offering tomorrow," she promised. The policeman's entrails had yielded no new omens. "Divination is uncertain, you know this—"
He cut her off abruptly. "And it will fail tomorrow. The same way it's failed every night since she escaped me!" Turning away from the window, he grabbed her roughly by the shoulders, just the way she liked it. Whisper knew she should fear Mannheim's wrath, but that only made the moment more thrilling. "Everything is prepared but this last piece of the prophesy! Gotham stands ready to burn to ashes, but I must have the Twice-Named Daughter's heart to kindle the holy flames!"
"And you shall, Brother Bruno." She stroked his face to mollify him. The caresses seemed to please him, although his scowl persisted. "We know the
Book cannot be wrong, for the Word is perfect in its cruelty. The error must come in our interpretation of the prophesy not in the prophesy itself."
"Or in a lack of faith," he agreed sullenly. They were both true believers.
Behind them, Abbot placed the Crime Bible down on Mannheim's own marble lectern. The act attracted the ganglord's attention, and he broke away from Whisper to snarl at her henchman. "Again and again you fail to find her, Brother Abbot. Ever since that one night when you fled from her in terror."
"Nightwing came to her assistance," Abbot reminded him impatiently. He was clearly tired of having to keep explaining this. "I was outnumbered and outfought."
"You should have trusted the Word to be your strength," Mannheim accused him.
Abbot stood his ground. "This would be the same 'Word' that prophesied you killing her five months ago?" He sneered at Mannheim. "We all know how that worked out for you, Bruno."
"Blasphemer!" Flushed with rage, Mannheim charged at Abbot. The two men slammed into the long boardroom table, shattering it. Lupine fangs sprouted from Abbot's gums as he started to change into a wolf-man again. He growled furiously at Mannheim, fighting back. "I'll take your heart!" Mannheim threatened as they grappled savagely. The tussle carried them across the office. They crashed against the lectern, knocking the Crime Bible from its stand. It fell toward the floor.
"Stop it, both of you!" Whisper shouted. She dived for the falling book, but got there too late. The Book landed with a thump upon the carpet. "In Cain's name—"
Her eyes widened as she gazed at the Crime Bible, which had fallen open to that symbolic representation of Mannheim ripping Batwoman's heart from her chest. Could there be any clearer omen than that? She gasped out loud as inspiration struck her like a blast of hellfire rising up from the abyss.
"Cain," she whispered. "It's her name."
Snatching up the Book from the floor, she rushed between Mannheim and Abbot. By now, Abbot had completed his lycanthropic transformation. Mannheim's tailored suit had been rent by the wolf-man's claws. Heedless of the danger in getting between the murderous combatants, she thrust out her arm to separate them.
"Don't you see?" she exclaimed. "It's her name! Cain! We focused on the illustration and saw only the Batwoman! But the true meaning is in the words. 'The Twice-Named Daughter of Cain!' One name is Batwoman, the other is Cain."
Mannheim instantly grasped what she was saying. His beef with Abbot forgotten, he shoved himself away from the growling werewolf. Excitement deepened his voice. "We find the woman with the name of Cain...."
"Exactly." Whisper nodded eagerly. "There can't be many women in Gotham with the name, the resources, and the training to become Batwoman. And once we know who she really is, it will be a simple matter to place her heart in your hands!"
The entire country was a graveyard. The capital lay in ruins. Emergency relief units from around the world swarmed over the corpse-strewn rubble, assisted by the Justice Society of America. Jay Garrick, the original Flash, searched the devastated landscape at superspeed, resembling a blurry red streak until he finally skidded to a stop in front of Green Lantern. His winged silver helmet made him look like a middle-aged Mercury, straight out of classical mythology. His weathered face held a grim expression. He shook his head soberly
"I haven't found a single survivor," he reported.
"Neither has my ring," Green Lantern said. Emerald flames emanated from his power ring, forming an enormous green fist that lifted a collapsed building from the surrounding debris. To his dismay, he found only corpses beneath the toppled high-rise. The dead bodies were everywhere, lying atop the rubble or buried beneath pulverized steel and timber. Equally horrific vistas, he knew, could be found all across the murdered nation. "Over two million dead."
Shaken by the carnage, he let the flaming hand evaporate. The fractured skyscraper crashed to earth, raising a cloud of dust. Not far away, Mister Terrific, Power Girl, and the rest of the team did what they could to uncover more bodies. Doctor Mid-Nite, the Society's resident physician, treated overstressed aid workers for exhaustion and dehydration.
Wildcat tossed a mangled metal street sign aside. The grizzled former heavyweight boxing champion wore a furry black cat costume, complete with whiskers, that would have looked ridiculous on anyone else. "Ya really think Black Adam did this on his own?" he asked gruffly.
"I've never seen him unleash anything like this," Green Lantern said, "but the satellite images Amanda Waller gathered ..."
Wildcat snorted in derision. "You're not seriously listenin' to Waller, are ya?"
"I may not always agree with her methods," Green Lantern said, "but her footage matches what info we've received from other sources." The veteran hero had deep connections to the American intelligence community. "If Black Adam has truly gone berserk, we're going to need all the allies we can get."
"I'm glad you feel that way, Alan," a new voice said. An anonymous figure on the horizon suddenly increased in size and height, until he towered over the other heroes and relief workers. A dark blue cowl concealed the giant's face, but Green Lantern recognized him instantly.
"Atom-Smasher?" .
"I want back on the JSA," Al Rothstein declared. He had once been a member in good standing of the Justice Society, before he helped Black Adam liberate Kahndaq from its former dictator. Now the young hero had blood on his hands. "Waller issued me a pardon." His determined voice boomed over the ruins. "I want to help you find Black Adam."
When Renee had last left Gotham, nearly three months ago, the city had been blanketed in snow. Now March was exiting like the proverbial lamb, bringing a hint of spring to the air. Vic's trench coat hung open as she took the elevator up to Kate's penthouse apartment. Her duffel bag was slung over her shoulder. She counted the floors impatiently, looking forward to a warmer reception here than the one she had recently received in Kahndaq.
I'm lucky I got out of there alive, she realized. Especially after what Black Adam did next.
The old Renee would have blamed herself for the slaughter in Bialya, but her current self refused to wallow in guilt over her failure to console Black Adam. The vengeful superman had been a stone-cold killer for over three thousand years; it was doubtful that anyone could have gotten through to him after Isis was killed. At least I tried, Renee thought. I can live with that.
The elevator door slid open and she hurried out into the hallway. She couldn't wait to see Kate again. Her steps quickened as she approached the door to the penthouse. It was dark out, but maybe Batwoman was not on the prowl yet. She reached the door, then froze when she realized it was already ajar.
"Kate?" she called out apprehensively. A cop's instincts put her on alert. Pushing open the door with her foot, she cautiously entered the apartment. Her ray gun was tucked away in her duffel, but Renee didn't have the patience to dig it out right now. Her right hand found the light switch, but the overhead lights failed to come on. Another bad sign.
As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, streetlights from outside exposed a ghastly scene. The penthouse had been totaled. Broken glass and timbers were strewn about the living room. Expensive furniture had been overturned. Leather upholstery was slashed and torn. A stiff breeze rustled the curtains over the shattered windows. Tufts of fur and feathers blew about the suite. A broken tusk was embedded in a fallen bookshelf, not far from a piece of severed tentacle. Blood splattered the walls and ceiling, and pooled upon the carpet. The gory stains still looked wet.
Renee gasped out loud. Her duffel bag dropped onto the floor.
This was more than mere evidence of a struggle. From the look of things, Kate had fought hard against a small army of beast-men before they had finally beaten her into submission. "Kate," Renee whispered hollowly. The fact that no body was visible provided meager comfort. She knelt beside the nearest puddle of blood. There seemed to be an awful lot of it....
"They took her," a male voice confirmed. Renee looked up to see Nightwing standing on the sill of the broken picture window. The curtains flapped around Batman's protege, whom Renee had met on occasion back during her days on the force. "We're going to get her back."
If she's still alive, Renee thought. And Mannheim hasn't yanked her heart out yet.
«
Gotham had way too many warehouses, at least as far as Renee was concerned. Heavy crates were piled high on wooden pallets as she and Nightwing invaded yet another murky storage facility in search of a lead on Kate's current whereabouts. The masked vigilante machined across the floor like an acrobat, letting his lightning-fast hands and feet put the fear of the Bat into a gang of motley beast-men. Renee was right behind him, watching his back.
"Where is Mannheim?" she demanded. "Where?" .
A warning shot from Renee's ray gun drove back a snarling pack of were-creatures. The futuristic firearm matched the black-market ordnance being unloaded by the shape-shifting Intergang thugs. Renee couldn't help remembering her first battle with the beast-men, in a shadowy warehouse much like this one. Then she had fought beside the Question instead of Nightwing, but that wasn't all that had changed over the last ten months or so. Now Vic was dead, and Kate might be, too. Renee wore Vic's hat and trench coat in memory of her friend, but her face was still her own. She wasn't ready to put on the Question's mask just yet.
Maybe she never would be.
This is taking too long, she thought impatiently She and Nightwing had spent the last several days combing the city for Kate, hitting everything from swanky mob-controlled nightclubs to skeezy strip joints in the worst parts of town. This dockside warehouse was only the latest stop on their whirlwind tour of Intergang hangouts, but Renee prayed that it wouldn't turn out to be another dead end. For all they knew, Mannheim was going to sacrifice Kate any night now, if he hadn't already....
All because of that damn prophesy, she thought. Renee still wasn't sure she actually believed in any of that Crime Bible mumbo jumbo, but that didn't matter. What counts is that Mannheim and his creepy cult believe it.
A few feet ahead of Renee, Nightwing slammed a puma-man's whiskered snout into the lid of a large wooden crate, which splintered loudly. Renee spotted a minotaur trying to pry open another crate to get at the weapons inside, so she squeezed off another blast from her ray gun, disintegrating both the crate and its lethal contents. Another burst sent the bull-headed monster and his cronies scrambling for the exits.
Not so fast, Renee thought. Not until one of you tells me where Kate is.
Katherine Kane was not looking her best.
After nearly a week in captivity, her Batwoman costume was tom and filthy. Heavy iron shackles weighed down her chafed wrists and ankles. Her utility belt had been stripped from her. A split lip testified to her rough treatment at the hands of her captors. Scabs and bruises, many of them left over from her losing battle at the penthouse, formed a black-and-blue mosaic over her battered flesh. Her long red hair was matted and badly in need of a shampoo. The rough stone floor of her cell was cold and unyielding. Her stomach growled piteously; she had been served nothing but water and gruel for days now. Still, she would have gladly traded a three-course meal for one good Batarang.
How long have 1 been here anyway? she wondered. Locked away from the sun, starved and beaten, it was hard to keep track of the time. Has it been five days already? Six?
Whisper A'Daire leered at her with the sort of salacious delight usually reserved for female wardens in women-in-prison movies. Her feral associate, Abbot, looked on with a scowl on his face as Whisper delicately fingered the red inner lining of Kate's soiled cape.
"No, this just won't do, not for such a special occasion. The garb is fine, but the condition ..." Her nose wrinkled in distaste. She peeled away Batwoman's mask, exposing Kate's face. Two swollen black eyes offered further evidence of abuse. Whisper ran her gaze over the other woman's tight black costume. "Of course, white is traditional for virgin sacrifices, but that hardly matters in your case." ’
Bitch! Kate lunged at the other woman, determined to wipe the smirk off her face. But her reflexes were slowed by too little food and too much brutality. Whisper deftly stepped out of the prisoner's reach, while Abbot bludgeoned Kate from behind. She collapsed onto the floor. She swore out loud, infuriated by her own weakness. Abbot dug his heel into her back to keep her from getting back up again.
"No more of that," Whisper declared. She knelt down beside Kate, who caught a glimpse of a hypodermic needle in Whisper's hands. No! Kate thought. Get that away from me! She tried to wriggle out from beneath Abbot's foot, but
Whisper surged forward with the speed of a striking rattlesnake. The hypo jabbed into Kate's neck.
A narcotic numbness spread quickly through her veins. Kate struggled to resist the drug's effect, but within seconds she was too groggy to even remember why she was, fighting back. Her bones seemed to dissolve as she melted limply against the floor. Her eyes rolled back until only the whites were visible. The last thing she was aware of, before succumbing completely, were Whisper's cool fingers stroking her cheek.
"That's more like it," she said. "Let's clean her up."
The slimy tentacles of an enraged human octopus reached out for Nightwing's head. Suckers the size of silver dollars glistened upon the underside of the tentacles, wTiile the creature's chitinous beak clacked angrily. Gripping a hard plastic escrima stick in each hand, Nightwing batted the aggressive tentacles away, but the crazed cephalopod had eight limbs to the hero's two, putting Nightwing at a severe disadvantage. A pair of tentacles caught hold of Nightwing's right arm and flung him into the side of a large steel cargo container. Dozens of surplus pallets were stacked precariously on top of the container. Renee winced in sympathy as Nightwing hit the container hard enough to leave a dent. The upper tentacles grabbed onto his face and pulled at his skin. He let out a pained grunt.
"Hey, Squid-Face!" Renee called out. "Heads up!"
A golden beam shot from her stolen ray gun. The bottommost pallet atop the damaged container vanished in a burst of light. An avalanche of wooden planks cascaded down onto the octo-man. A loud squish turned Renee's stomach as the creature's trunk and tentacles were trapped beneath a heap of heavy timbers. Hot plasma rose like smoke from the muzzle of her high-tech pistol.
I never did like calamari, she thought. Nightwing yanked a limp tentacle away from his face. The suckers left angry red rings on the skin around his batshaped mask. He gazed down at the defeated octopus-man, who whimpered beneath the fallen pallets. "Thanks for the save," he said to Renee.
She glanced around the warehouse. The fight appeared to be over. The few beast-men who were still conscious had evidently chosen to make tracks rather than risk ending up like the squashed were-octopus. She hoped the trapped monster wasn't injured too badly to answer any questions. What was the point of trashing this place if it doesn't get us any closer to Kate? .
Blinking lights caught her attention, and she looked up at the dented shipping container, whose door was now ajar. Inside the container was some sort of high-tech device that looked like a cross between a neutron bomb and a large industrial drill, big enough to drill straight through to China. Lighted panels and gauges flickered over the surface of the device. It hummed softly.
Uh-oh, she thought. I don't like the looks of this.
Blood and brains dripped from Bruno Mannheim's hands. He wiped them off with a towel, then angrily hurled the towel onto the carpet. A framed blowup of the Fire Pit drawing from the Crime Bible now adorned the wall of his office. His eyes held a manic gleam as he stared at the sacred illustration. He ground his teeth in agitation. An angry vein pulsed against his temple.
"Every single word as the Book commands us, Whisper! All for tonight, to spill the holy blood tonight!" Instead of his usual tailored suits, a scarlet robe, with golden trim, clothed his stocky frame. The vivid hue of the ceremonial garment hid the spattered bloodstains. The sacred dagger was tucked into the sash around his waist. "This wasn't supposed to happen."
The body of a dead frog-man lay at Mannheim's feet. His skull had been pulped beyond recognition by the mob boss's bare hands, just because the unfortunate amphibian had been the bearer of bad news. Typical, Abbot thought. He regarded the volatile ganglord with barely concealed contempt. I've had about enough of this lunatic's tantrums.
Abbot waited by the office door, which was guarded by a pair of smelly ape-men. He kept his distance from Mannheim, but Whisper hurried forward to mollify their leader. A flash of jealousy added to Abbot's sour mood. He was starting to wish that he and Whisper had never gotten involved with this insane cult. Bruno Mannheim was no Ra's al Ghul, that was for sure.
Why couldn't Whisper see that?
"Calmly, Brother Bruno," she purred into Mannheim's ear. Like him, she had already donned her priestly regalia. Her slinky black gown rustled as she moved, like a serpent in the grass. She gracefully stepped over the mess on the carpet. "The sacrifice awaits you even now."
"What does that matter now?" Mannheim ranted. According to the frogman, a key element in their grand design may have already fallen into the hands of their enemies. "I should've carved the Twice-Named's heart from her breast the moment she was in our power!"
"And defied the Word by doing so," Whisper reminded him. In theory, the sacrifice could only be performed under the right conditions and circumstances. They had already missed one such opportunity months ago, when Batwoman escaped them.
At least that's what we thought, Abbot thought bitterly. His doubts had started then, the first time the Book's so-called prophesies had turned out to be about as reliable as a cheap fortune cookie. Now, of course, Whisper claimed that they had simply misinterpreted the prophesy. Abbot's lip curled into a
sneer. Yeah, right.
"We were not ready to unleash the Fires, Brother." She rested her chin on Mannheim's shoulder as she pressed her sinuous body against his back. Fler arm draped itself around his bull-like neck. "It is tonight that you are destined to welcome the rule of Rage with the Twice-Named's heart in your hand. Her death will mark the dawn of Intergang's dominion over the world. A world devoid of virtue, devoted to the worst of humanity. A world much like Gotham City itself, before the coming of the Bat."
Her seductive blandishments failed to appease him. "How am I gonna do that when one of the Keys is lost?"
"Brother Abbot will recover the Key," she promised him, "and all shall come to pass as written."
Speak for yourself, Abbot thought. He was tired of keeping his mouth shut. "And if it doesn't? If, once again, the Book is wrong? What then?"
"Blasphemy!" Mannheim raved, his face turning purple. Whisper tried to restrain him, but he tore himself away from her arms and lunged at Abbot. He backhanded the other man across the face. "The Book is hot wrong! The Book is never wrong!" •
"Bruno," Whisper pleaded.
"No! Send others to recover the Key." He nodded at the ape-men, who took hold of Abbot from both sides. Alarmed, Abbot struggled to break free from the simians' powerful grip. "Your dog's time is done here." Mannheim rammed his fist into Abbot's gut. "I'll see him carved apart for his heresies!"
Nightwing seemed to share Renee's concern about the mysterious device they had just found inside the shipping container. Opaque white lenses concealed his eyes, but there was no mistaking the worried cast of his mouth and jaw. He squatted down on his haunches to examine the machine while Renee looked on. She fidgeted restlessly.
"So how did you find out about Kate anyway?" she asked him. Given that they had met in Kate's vandalized apartment, there was obviously no point in trying to conceal Batwoman's secret identity.
"She didn't tell me who she really was, if that's what you're asking," he commented. "She just made it easy for me to figure it out." He glanced up at Renee. "Her way of saying she trusted me, 1 think."
Renee nodded. "That sounds like her." She wondered how much Nightwing knew about their stormy history. Not that it really mattered. She gestured at the ominous-looking device. "So what do you think?"
Nightwing stood up. "I think it's a bomb of some sort, and I should probably stop messing with it." He cautiously stepped away from the device. "Stuff like this is better left to experts. We ought to call in the G.C.P.D. to handle this."
"I'd rather not be here for that," Renee told him, "if you don't mind."
He looked her over. "That's right. You used to be a detective, didn't you?"
"I'm still a detective," she said forcefully.
Is that why you chose me, Charlie? That need to ask the question? The need for answers? Or was it something else? A way to fight your own demons?
Turning away from the blinking device, she squatted down in front of the pinned octo-man. The tips of the monster's upper tentacles twitched feebly against the floor. He smelled like sushi gone bad. She gagged at the stench even as she gave him her most intimidating interrogation stare. More than willing to play the bad cop, she grabbed onto his beak and forcibly lifted his head from the floor. She looked ready to rip his tentacles off one by one to get what she wanted. It wasn't an act.
"Where's Martnheim? Where's the woman he kidnapped?"
"It's too shhllpp late!" the octo-man slurped. "You will blplll burn, all of Gotham will burn!"
A shadow fell over Renee. "He's right," another voice rumbled behind her. "And it will begin with you!"
Diving instinctively to one side, she drew her gun. A burst of red-hot flames struck the floor right where she had been kneeling only a second before. A quick scan revealed four new beast-men on the attack, led by an honest-to-goodness dragon-man, complete with glittering bronze scales, the head of a prehistoric lizard, dorsal fins, and a flailing tail. Dragonhead perched atop a nearby stack of crates, glaring down at Renee and her prisoner. A cone of fire erupted from the creature's jaws. The blast barely missed Renee, incinerating the octo-man instead. The burning were-creature shrieked in torment as the heap of wooden pallets turned into a funeral pyre. "GNNHHAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!"
"Montoya!" Nightwing shouted as he leapt up and kicked Dragonhead across the jaw. "The device! Don't let them activate the device!"
A human-vulture hybrid, with a wattled throat, a hooked beak, and dark black wings, was already flapping toward the mystery device. A shaggy sasquatch and a snake-tressed gorgon followed close behind their avian accomplice, charging at Renee. She smacked her gun across the face of the gorgon, then sprinted after the vulture-man. Her soles pounded against the concrete as she raced past the smoldering remains of the octo-man. The nauseating smell reminded her of that time the Firebug torched the Gotham Fish Market....
Recovering from Nightwing's kick, Dragonhead belched flames at the hero, who seemed to catch a piece of the blast before he sprang out of the way. Renee hoped that Nightwing's snazzy costume was seriously fire-resistant. "Ahhh!" he yelped as he landed clumsily at the fire-breathing reptile's feet.
"Light the Inferno, brothers!" the dragon roared. "The time is now!"
Renee was gaining on the buzzard, until the sasquatch tackled her from behind. He hit her like a giant hairy linebacker, knocking her off her feet. Crashing toward the floor, she saw the vulture-man swoop down into the open cargo container. Three-toed feet touched down right in front of the humming machine. Renee threw her arms out in front of her; instead of trying to break her fall, she fired off another burst from her ray gun. The incandescent golden beam burned a hole straight through the buzzard's right pinion. He screeched in pain.
Winged him! she thought as she hit the ground. The impact knocked the breath out of her and jolted the ray gun from her grasp. The sasquatch's bulk pinned her to the floor, while the gorgon chased after the fallen weapon. The writhing snakes atop the beast-woman's head hissed like burning fuses.
Sorry to let you down again, Charlie, she thought, frustrated by her failure. You tried your best, in what little time you had left. Maybe you should have chosen another studmt. One less selfish and self-absorbed . . .
She was still dazed when the sasquatch stood up and yanked her to her feet. Grinning wickedly, the gorgon waved Renee's own gun in her face. A forked tongue reminded Renee of Whisper A'Daire. She was getting pretty damn sick of this never-ending freak show.
The bigfoot's rancid breath blew against the back of Renee's neck. Drool dripped from his prognathous jaw. A sloping brow made him look like the Missing Link. "Shoot her," he growled at the gorgon.
A few yards away Dragonhead had his scaly tail wrapped around Nightwing's throat. Grimacing, Nightwing tried to pull the constricting coils away from his neck, but wasn't having much luck. The left corner of his uniform was badly scorched. Sucker-marks still blemished his face. His feet dangled in the air as the dragon's tail lifted him off the floor.
"Don't you get it, meat?" Dragonhead jeered. Nightwing swung an es-crima stick at the monster's slitted eye, but Dragonhead easily blocked the blow with his right paw. Tiny red flames started to curl around the corners of the reptile's mouth as he got ready to roast Nightwing for good. "The outcome was already decided. This was all written long ago."
A guttural new voice intruded on the scene. "Then you probably should have seen this coming, hadn't you?"
Without warning, a furry black wolf-man pounced onto Dragonhead's back. Lupine fangs sank into the reptile's scaly neck. Dragonhead reared backward in surprise. His flaming breath shot uselessly at the ceiling, sparing Nightwing.
What the hell? Renee thought. She instantly recognized Abbot, Whisper's lycanthropic henchman, but what was he doing on their side all of a sudden? Her subhuman captors appeared equally stunned by the werewolf's unexpected arrival. The gorgon looked confused, uncertain what to do next. Just so long as she doesn't pull the trigger...
Caught off guard by Abbot, Dragonhead must have loosened his grip on Nightwing, who took advantage of the respite to kick himself free of the monster's tail. Cold blood sprayed across the warehouse as the wolf-man tore out a chunk of Dragonhead's shoulder with his teeth. Nightwing followed up with a flying kick across the reptile's face. Jagged incisors cracked to pieces, but the enraged dragon seemed angrier at the werewolf on his back. "Heretic! Infidel! Betrayer!" Dragonhead spit out chunks of broken enamel. Spraying saliva smelled like kerosene. "You shall—!"
Furious blows from Nightwing's plastic batons cut off the threat in midsentence. Abbot slashed his claws across the dragon's neck. A bloodthirsty howl issued from his throat.
There's something you don't see every day, Renee thought. A werewolf fighting a dragon fighting a super hero . .,
The two monsters threatening Renee didn't know what to make of this shocking turn of events. The gun-toting gorgon looked away from Renee to check out the bizarre clash going on only a few paces away. The sasquatch's sunken eyes were also glued to the fight. Even the snakes on the gorgon's head were distracted.
Renee saw her opportunity and took it. She savagely kicked the gorgon in the crotch, then snatched the ray gun back from the snake-woman's grip. Before the sasquatch even knew what was happening, she shot him in the bigfoot. He let go of her abruptly and stumbled backward, clutching his perforated foot, while the gorgon groaned weakly, doubled over in pain.
Wishing she was pistol-whipping Whisper A'Daire instead, Renee whacked the gorgon in the side of the head, putting her and her serpentine hairdo down for the count. She turned to deal with the sasquatch, but Nightwing beat her to the punch. An escrima stick ricocheted off the floor to hit the crippled beast-man right below the chin. The sasquatch dropped like a shag carpet onto the floor. How about that? Renee thought. Who knew Bigfoot had a glass chin?
She looked over at her allies and saw that Dragonhead had also been taken care of. The fire-breathing monstrosity lay in a pool of his own blood, his flames thoroughly extinguished. Was he still breathing? Renee was in no hurry to check. She had more pressing matters to worry about right now.
Like Abbot; for one.
The wolf-man stood over the prone body of his victim. Nightwing watched him warily, poised to defend himself at the first sign of an attack. Renee kept her gun raised. She hadn't forgotten that shipping office in Shiruta, where Abbot had massacred all those people. She trusted the lycanthropic hit man about as much as she trusted the Joker.
"The save buys you an explanation," Nightwing told him, "but not a lot more."
"You want a bloody explanation?" Abbot snarled. Fur and fangs melted away as he morphed back into his human guise. Now that her life was no longer in immediate jeopardy, Renee noticed that Abbot looked like he'd been through a hell of a fight. His right eye was missing, and one ear was partly torn away. Cuts and scrapes and bruises covered his naked body more than his brief tussle with Dragonhead could account for. Someone had worked him over pretty badly. "I'm sick of prophesies, that's my..." His remaining eye lit up as a sudden thought struck him. "Wait a sec ... where'd that buzzard get to?"
Crap! Renee thought. She had forgotten about the vulture-man, too. Spinning around, she spotted the wounded beast-man dragging himself up against the scary mechanism. There was a smoking hole in his wingspan, but that didn't stop him from wrapping his talons around a stainless steel lever. His hoarse voice held a fanatic's fervor.
"To the shiv, the gat, and the Red Rock, in thy unholy name ..."
Dragonhead's alarming instructions flashed through Renee's brain.
"Light the Inferno."
"No!" Nightwing exclaimed. He and Renee dashed forward to stop him, but Abbot grabbed onto both of them and dragged them backward, away from whatever doomsday weapon the mutated cultist was trying to activate. Even in human form, Abbot was unnaturally strong. Dammit, she thought. I knew we couldn't trust him!
"Let go!" Nightwing protested. "We've got to stop him!"
"Too late!" Abbot barked. "Get down!"
They hit the floor only a second before the suicidal buzzard pulled down the lever. A sudden burst of heat flared against Renee's face as the device ignited, instantly consuming both the vulture-man and the cargo container. A pillar of liquid flame shot through the roof of the warehouse and up into the night sky.
Way, way up.
Flat on the floor beside Nightwing and Abbot, Renee couldn't look away from the blazing column, which cast a red-hot glow over the interior of the warehouse. She' shuddered as she recalled that other etching in the Book of Crime: the flaming pit at the center of a damned city. Was this what Intergang had been planning for Gotham all this time?
And what did this mean for Kate?
"It's growing," Nightwing realized as they backed away from the flames and got to their feet. "It looks like it's spreading."
"It is," Abbot confirmed. He looked sickened by the sight. "Just not the way you imagine it. It's not going out." He pointed at the base of the pillar, which was busily burning its way through the concrete floor of the building. "It's digging down."
Fleeing the unbearable heat inside the warehouse, the unlikely trio relocated to the rooftop of an adjacent building. From that vantage point, Renee was able to see that the towering pillar of fire was just one of six skyscraper-sized torches lighting up the night. The burning columns were arrayed throughout the city, from the Upper East Side to Chinatown. Fire engines rushed from one blaze to another. Screams and sirens wailed over the crackling of the flames.
"Gotham burns tonight," Abbot stated. "Each device tears into the foundations of the city, igniting everything it touches. By dawn, a pit of fire will roar at your city's heart."
Renee recalled the apocalyptic illustration once more. "It doesn't make sense," she objected, "If Intergang wants Gotham, why turn it into a fire pit?"
"Because Mannheim believes everything in the Crime Bible is true and must come to pass." The disgust in the werewolf's voice made it clear that he was no longer a believer.
"What about Kate?" Renee asked. "The Twice-Named Daughter of Cain? Is she still alive?"
Abbot nodded. "Her heart is supposed to unite the flames and open the pit. Mannheim intends to sacrifice her at dawn."
"Over my dead body," Renee said fiercely.
Abbot was unimpressed by her bravado. "Easy enough for him to do, girl. Bloody hell, even if you can save her, it won't be enough."
"Then stop wasting time," Nightwing demanded. "And tell us what will be."
Renee stepped away, putting some distance between herself and the men. She felt destiny, and Vic's enigmatic agenda, closing in on her—or maybe it was just her future taking shape. Who am I, Charlie? Who am I going to be? Richard Dragon's words of wisdom echoed in her brain. "Some questions can only be answered by wearing a mask."
"Each device has to be shut down," Abbot explained to Nightwing. "Otherwise they'll simply bum where they stand until nothing is left."
Nightwing took Abbot at his word. "We'll split up," he declared, taking charge. The sucker-marks on his face had finally faded away. "You and Montoya go after the devices. I'll—"
"No," she said firmly. Her gloved fingers found the hidden switch on her belt buckle. A balled up wad of pseudoderm dropped into her hand. Tot's patented binary gases billowed out from the buckle. The swirling fumes smelled like baby powder and cardamom. She unfolded the mask and began to smooth it over her face. "It's got to be you two who go after the devices."
The pseudoderm bonded to her face as though it belonged there. Renee experienced a flash of claustrophobia as the artificial flesh covered her mouth, nose, and eyes, but the anxiety swiftly passed. She was surprised at how good it felt to be so empty and so free.
Who am 1? Who am I going to be?
The two men stared at her in surprise as the last of the fumes wafted past them. The gas reacted with the chemicals in her hair and clothes, changing their color. Her dark brown hair turned pitch-black. The trench coat went from tan to slate gray. Renee Montoya's distinctive features had disappeared beneath a smooth expanse of skin.
Good question.
"I'll take care of Mannheim," the Question said.
Nightwing took her transformation in stride. She guessed that he was used to all manner of masked heroes and villains. "You'll be going to rescue Kate alone," he pointed out. "Would you really die for this?"
Her blank face looked back at him.
"Wouldn't you?"
For the first time in years, she was going back to church.
Gotham Cathedral had been closed ever since the Crisis, when a freak meteor storm had trashed Cathedral Square and the surrounding neighborhoods. Scaffolding and opaque canvas tarps now covered the exterior of the looming Gothic edifice. A metal sign hung upon the chain-link fence surrounding the construction site:
CATHEDRAL SQUARE RESTORATION PROJECT
"Rebuilding the spiritual heart of Gotham."
REOPENING SUMMER NEXT YEAR Brought to you by your friends at Ridge-Ferrick Construction
Towers of flame, burning in the distance, cast an incarnadine glow over the Square. The crimson radiance made it seem like the sun was already rising, but the Question figured it was still at least thirty minutes until dawn. She hoped that would be enough.
For Kate and the city.
Taking one last look at the sky-high torches, she silently wished Nightwing luck and crept toward the cathedral. The padlock securing the wire gate proved easy enough to pick, while Richard's training gave her the finesse to slip past the scaffolding and tarps undetected. Peering through her eyeless mask, she spotted a jackal-headed beast-man standing guard just inside the cathedral. The canine sentry sniffed the air suspiciously.
Looks like I’m on the right track, she decided. Guess Abbot was on the level.
She picked up a nearby piece of rebar. Being careful to stay downwind of the jackal-man, she came up behind him and cracked the rebar against his skull. He dropped onto the worn marble floor of the vestibule. His tongue lolled from his muzzle. His tail twitched against the flagstones.
Time to let sleeping dogs lie, the Question thought. Hope PETA doesn't find out about this.
She cautiously entered the heart of the cathedral, and frowned behind her mask. The vaulted chamber, once a lovely monument to Gothic architecture, had been thoroughly gutted and vandalized. Obscene graffiti was scrawled upon the walls, along with blasphemous murals depicting high points in the unholy history of Crime: Cain slaying Abel, Judas betraying Christ, Sweeney Todd applying his bloody razor to the throat of an unsuspecting customer, Holmes and Mori-arty grappling at the brink of the Reichenbach Falls, Blackbeard laying siege to Charleston, Booth assassinating Lincoln, Bonnie and Clyde on a killing spree, the Joker beating Robin to death, Lex Luthor discovering kryptonite, an evil Superboy on a rampage, Jack the Ripper, Leopold and Loeb, Cheshire, Scarface, Lizzie Borden, Ra's al Ghul.... Everywhere she looked was more evidence of Mannheim's twisted religion, glorifying mass murder, torture, and every other heinous crime. I'll be damned, she vowed, if Kate's murder joins this sickening hit parade.
A large hole had been carved into the floor of the sanctuary, where the dais and altar used to be. Firelight emanated from deep within the hole. Smoke rose through a ragged gap in the vaulted ceiling.
The Question proceeded down the nave to the edge of the cavity. Snatches of a profane invocation emerged from the hole. She recognized the sly, sibilant voice even before she got close enough to peer down into the depths below.
"Bound and gagged, hostage and victim, prisoner and slave," Whisper A'Daire chanted, "thus do we offer the fool's flesh, that of your wayward daughter, your lost wolf. ..
The overly familiar cadences made the Question's skin crawl, but not as much as what she saw as she furtively peeked over the edge.
The Cult of Crime had transformed one of the cathedral's underground crypts into an unholy temple that reminded Renee of the one she and Vic had infiltrated in Bialya, back when there still was a Bialya. The rotting bones of past sacrificial victims occupied niches carved into the walls of the desecrated catacomb, but she barely registered their presence. Instead her attention was seized by the terrifying sight of Kate lying, chained and gagged, atop a large stone sarcophagus that now served as an altar. She was dressed as Batwoman, but her mask and utility belt were missing. Her luxuriant red hair was elegantly coiffed. Beauty makeup failed to entirely conceal her swollen eyes and busted lip. Rusty chains bound her to the lid of the coffin. Wide awake, she squirmed and tugged at her bonds, but to no avail. A black silk gag kept her from shouting at her captors.
Bruno Mannheim, his brutish anatomy incongruously garbed in a flowing crimson robe, stood over Kate's supine form. He held aloft a fancy-looking golden dagger. Whisper A'Daire, wearing the same "naughty nun" outfit she had sported in Bialya, was positioned behind a nearby lectern, where she read aloud from the Book of Crime. A circle of low flames surrounded the ceremony. No other congregants appeared to be present.
"And saying such, the Killer drew his shiv 'cross the Whetstone of Brutus once, twice, thrice, and using its edge did test it on hisself...."
In accordance with the lurid text, Mannheim sliced his own thumb with the gleaming blade. Kate glared at him with both fear and fury as he rubbed the thumb beneath her eyes, smearing his blood across her face. The silk gag muffled her protests. The Question shuddered at the degrading scene; if not for her mask, she would have looked just as pissed off as Batwoman.
"Splitting the skin of his thumb, and anointing the frail with his claret..."
The Question had heard—and seen—enough. She drew the ray gun from beneath her coat.
Remember Shiruta, Charlie? The girl I killed, the Intergang suicide bomber?
"And seeing the razor cut quick and right, he readied hisself to the wet work before him...."
Mannheim raised the knife with both hands. He stood poised to bury the point of the blade in Kate's chest.
"In Cain's name, we commend this offering, the heart of the Twice-Named Daughter...." ,
The Question calmly aimed the gun at Mannheim.
What goes around, comes around. '
"That the fires of your hate and pain may blaze on Earth ..."
Her finger tightened on the trigger—just as a pair of beast-men tackled her from behind. She fired off a shot, but the blast went wild, disintegrating one of the slumbering skeletons instead of Mannheim. Savage growls filled her ears as she tumbled forward over the edge.
Damn! She landed roughly onto the dusty stone floor of the crypt, just outside the flaming circle. The two monsters—a horned satyr and a were-grizzly—pounced down after her. Startled, Mannheim stepped back from altar, lowering the dagger. Whisper darted out from behind the lectern. Her slitted eyes widened at the sight of the faceless intruder. Oh well, Renee thought. At least I kept hold of my gun this time.
"I told you!" Mannheim shouted. The Question's abrupt appearance obviously upset him. "I told you, Whisper!"
The outraged priestess didn't argue the point. "Kill her!" she commanded the beast-men. "Kill her!"
The bear-man and the satyr charged at the Question, who dropped them with one shot each, while Whisper came at her from the side. Iridescent scales spread across Whisper's exposed skin as she took on a more serpentine form. Folds upon her throat inflated into a cobra's hood. Fangs extended from her gums. Venom sprayed from her lips.
The caustic saliva burned right through the Question's glove, stinging her skin. She yelped in pain as her gun slipped from her fingers. Whisper sprang at the Question, her jaws open impossibly wide. "Foolissssh girl!"
She charged into the Question, shoving her up against the wall. Renee threw her forearm up beneath Whisper's chin in order to keep the snake-woman's fangs from her throat. Bones rattled in the limestone niche behind her. The circle of flames danced between them and the altar. The Question glimpsed Kate struggling atop the ponderous stone coffin.
"Her blood will ssspill here," Whisper hissed. A forked tongue flicked between her lips. Her slender legs melted together, forming the tail of an enormous serpent. Half woman, half cobra, Whisper now resembled a lamia out of classical mythology. The Question fought to keep the monster's venomous fangs at bay. "It isss written in the Vile Book!"
"I'm doing a rewrite," the Question said. Adapting a martial arts move she had learned in Nanda Parbat, she flipped Whisper into the ring of fire. The lamia shrieked in agony as the flames raced over her inhuman body. The scaly tail thrashed frenziedly as Whisper threw herself away from the fiery circle. Hissing furiously, she slithered away into the catacombs.
That's one less snake to worry about, the Question thought. She hastily scooped up her gun from the floor. To her alarm, she realized that she had lost track of
Mannheim in the confusion. Where is he? she thought frantically. Gun in hand, she whirled around toward the altar. What about Kate?
"The Word is perfect," a gruff voice intoned. "My faith without question."
The Question saw Mannheim plunge the dagger into Kate's chest. Her mouth was still gagged, but her body arched in agony. Mannheim's eyes blazed in exultation.
"NO!" Renee screamed. She fired the pistol and a brilliant yellow blast grazed Mannheim's thick skull. He toppled backward, away from the altar, leaving the golden blade embedded in Kate's chest. "No no no!"
Racing death, the Question rushed to the altar. Four short bursts from the ray gun disintegrated Kate's chains, freeing her, but the horrified detective feared that she was already too late. "Please, Kate, hold on...
Not again. Not this time.
She glanced quickly at Mannheim. The mob boss appeared to be down for the count, sprawled upon the floor at the very edge of the flaming circle. A tendril of white smoke rose from a nasty-looking burn on his temple. His pomaded black hair was singed above one ear. His once-crazed eyes were now closed at last. Part of Renee wanted to kick his ugly face in, but it was Kate who needed her full attention now.
"You're not doing this," she insisted, carefully tugging the gag away from Kate's mouth. "You're not dying...."
But the grisly sight before her seemed to mock her pleas. The dagger was buried deeply in Kate's chest, precisely in the center of the bat-symbol on her costume. There wasn't a whole lot of blood visible yet, but the Question knew a mortal injury when she saw one. Her memory flashed back to Crispus Allen lying dead on a street not terribly far from here, and of Vic Sage expiring in her arms amidst a plain of bloodstained snow.
No. This time is different. It has to be! .
"Gotta get the knife out," she murmured. Her fist closed around the hilt of the dagger.
"No..." Kate weakly lifted a hand to stop her. "That'll make it worse...." She looked up at the Question. Somehow she seemed to recognize Renee despite the disguise. Her fingers lightly grazed the pseudoderm. "Where'd your face go.... ?"
"You're looking at it," the Question said, choking back a sob.
"Not for long," Mannheim growled. Blood leaked from his wounded skull as he grabbed onto the Question's throat and yanked her away from Kate. She croaked loudly as Mannheim's powerful hand squeezed her larynx. "I'm going to rip it clean off your head!"
"Renee!" Kate gasped, too weak to intervene.
Mannheim pivoted, catapulting the Question into a wall. Dusty skeletons shattered on impact, rattling down onto the floor. Still maintaining a tight grip on her gun, the Question twisted her body in time to keep from breaking any of her own bones. But that didn't keep her head from spinning. She staggered groggily across the floor of the crypt. Chances were, she was already suffering from a. concussion.
Oh, this is bad in so many ways,
Mannheim strode through the fire toward her. His crimson robe appeared irritatingly flame-resistant. "By the way, I'll take my gun back now." He grabbed onto her gun arm and twisted it painfully, until she was forced to release the weapon. "If you don't mind."
"Hey," the Question said shakily, "all you had to do was ask."
Unamused by her flippant response, he pitched her headfirst into the side of the altar. She slumped down onto the floor. Kate tried to reach for her, but the movement obviously caused her excruciating pain. A sharp intake of breath hinted at her anguish.
"Funny," Mannheim snarled. He marched toward the Question, coming between her and the altar. His massive frame blocked her view of Kate. "Let's see if you make a funny pile of dust."
The Question tilted her heard to peer past the looming gangster. "I wouldn't do that," she whispered hoarsely.
"You wouldn't?" Mannheim sneered down at the faceless woman. He raised club-sized fists. "And why not?"
He stiffened abruptly. His troglodyte features contorted as the point of his sacred blade suddenly protruded from the center of his chest. Dark arterial blood streamed down his robe.
"She wasn't talking to you, Bruno," Kate explained, kneeling atop the altar. Her hands let go of the dagger's hilt. Her chestnut eyes flashed vindictively. "She was talking to me."
Mannheim toppled forward, landing facedown upon the floor. The hilt of the dagger jutted from his back. Kate, the last of her strength evaporating, started to tumble off the altar, but the Question jumped up to catch her before she hit the ground. She collapsed into Renee's arms.
This time it's different. . ..
Kate glanced down at her chest, where her bat-insignia rapidly disappeared beneath a spreading crimson oval. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. "Think maybe ... I shouldn't have done that...
With the blade no longer sealing the wound, Kate's lifeblood began to gush from her heart. "Stay with me," the Question urged as she gently laid Kate back down atop the altar. Her gloved hand pressed down on Batwoman's chest, applying pressure to the wound. "Stay with me."
Dawn's light began to creep into the crypt from the stained glass windows and shattered ceiling above them. Since they were not being engulfed by a bottomless pit of flame, the Question assumed that Nightwing and Abbot had managed to locate and disarm all six of Intergang's infernal devices. The sirens of the fire engines slowly died away outside.
Her hands stayed atop Kate's bleeding chest, while she silently recited the same mantra over and over again.
This time it's different.. . .