BRUCE WAYNE’S PRIVATE LEAR JET
SOMEWHERE BETWEEN GOTHAM AND FAWCETT CITY
5:12 p.m.
The Batman was pretending for the moment to be Bruce Wayne. He found it more difficult than usual and was grateful that he didn’t have an audience at the moment. The little jet was on autopilot and Batman was sitting back in his seat in the cockpit, studying the book Jason Blood had sent him by special messenger before he’d left Gotham. The volume was at least a hundred years old and was bound in something that looked disturbingly like human skin.
The name of the book was The Necromancer, written in the mid-19th century, as far as he could judge from internal evidence such as grammar and topical references (there was no date or publisher information on the flyleaf), by someone named Johanna Constantine. It was, frankly, a sick and repulsive piece of work. It featured detailed instructions on the raising and controlling of the dead. If someone had done these things to Billy, Mary and Freddy, that someone needed to be put down fast.
Unfortunately, the author of the book had been more concerned with raising the dead than with putting them back where they belonged. Only a small part of one of the chapters was devoted to spells and methods of protection against the raised dead. You could protect yourself against them and control them to an extent, but the only way to return them permanently
to the grave was to inflict severe trauma on the brain. Johanna Constantine recommended removing the organ, preparing it with certain herbs believed to have mystical powers, and eating it. Batman decided he would settle for inflicting the trauma.
That, however, wouldn’t be easy.
It might even be impossible.
He radioed ahead to the Waynetech office in Fawcett and made what the staff there considered a very bizarre request. He told them he would like to have several large bags of kosher salt waiting for him at the hotel room he’d reserved. The office manager had merely shrugged, said, “The rich are different,” and had one of the clerks go out and purchase the salt with
money from petty cash. Salt, for some reason, affected the animated dead in much the same way kryptonite did a certain acquaintance. Batman could not imagine why. The human body, even after death, contains a certain amount of salts, and these are necessary for proper functioning. Perhaps, he mused, additional salt causes a kind of “overdose." Or perhaps it is a totally arbitrary rule, of the kind that prevails in the world of magic. He snorted. He really, really did not like magic. Any system that operated totally removed from the scientific logic that was almost a religion to him... Well, he just didn't like it. However, as his father used to tell him, "You may not like it, but it's a fact of life."
He was a little surprised that he’d been able to get through so easily. He had tried repeatedly to get in touch with the League via his signal device, but hadn’t been able to make contact. After he finished speaking with the Fawcett office, he tried to shut off the radio. He found to his surprise that he couldn’t turn the knob. This plane had just had a complete overhaul. Had someone overlooked the radio?
Static came from the small speaker, then a jumble of sounds, the ghosts of several different radio stations at once. That was odd. This radio wasn’t supposed to pick up commercial broadcast frequencies. Gradually, one by one, the stations faded away until there was only one left. One song ended and another began. The Batman was by no means a pop music aficionado, but he recognized this song, which had been popular during his youth. Being possessed of near-total recall, he had no trouble identifying the song, the only chart-topping tune by a “one-hit-wonder” band called Paper Lace.
The song was The Night Chicago Died.
Stupid song, he thought, trying once again to twist the knob, with no success. He sighed and stopped trying, went back to studying the book, ignoring the radio.
The song played to its end. The sound from the speaker abruptly ceased, causing Batman to look up from the book. He started to reach for the knob, to try once again. It was now in the “off” position. Batman’s eyes narrowed. Something decidedly odd had just happened. What it meant, he didn’t know, but he was sure there was meaning in it. He could feel it. His instincts were good, and he trusted them implicitly. He filed the peculiar incident away for the moment and had one more go at the book, hoping to find something he’d missed. But there was nothing else. If this book is the final word on the subject, he thought, then we are all in deep trouble.
He took the plane off autopilot and prepared for the final approach to the Fawcett City Airport.
SOMEWHERE NEAR FAWCETT CITY
6 p.m.
Doctor Thaddeus Bodog Sivana, not the bravest or noblest of men even at the best of times, was currently scared witless. Why, oh, why had he gotten involved with these people? What in the hell were they DOING?
It had dawned on him earlier in the day that he was virtually being kept prisoner in this house. Hell, there was no “virtually” to it; he WAS a prisoner. That Watts character ... He was up to something far deeper and darker than he had led Sivana to believe. When this “Millennium Group” had approached him and offered to compensate him very generously indeed for his assistance, he had jumped on the deal like a hungry mutt on a porterhouse steak. They were, they told him, planning to take over the world, an ambition that he could understand and admire since he shared it. And he had possessed hubris enough to think that he could control the terms of the deal he would make, thus securing for himself a prominent place in the world to come.
He brought to the table with him a wonderful bargaining chip, one that, he now realized, he had given up much too easily. He was one of the few people on Earth who knew the secrets behind three of the most formidable creatures on the face of the planet. They were also Sivana’s mortal enemies; they had crossed him up time after time. He had been happy to sell them out.
But that was last week.
Today, he was wishing he’d played his hand a bit differently. Or perhaps not at all.
Today, he was wishing he’d never heard of Peter Watts and the Millennium Group.
Today he was wishing he hadn’t given Peter Watts an introduction to a worm from Venus.
Today, he was wishing he hadn’t picked the locked door of his bedroom in this place and snuck down the stairs and seen the report on CNN about what had happened to Seattle.
Today, he was seriously thinking that it might have been a very good thing if he had never been born at all.
BECK GARDENS CEMETERY
FAWCETT CITY
8:04 P.M.
The police were gone, but they had left their yellow tape behind, stretched from a series of wooden spikes driven into the ground, to offer its feeble protection to the disturbed graves of three young people. The police had also left behind a halogen lamp on a metal tripod, powered by a large battery. It didn’t make a lot of sense. Something felt wrong about it. The two agents had slipped into town and then into the cemetery after deliberately omitting to announce their presence to local law enforcement. Had they encountered guards, they would have bluffed their way through. They hadn’t expected a setup like this.
The cemetery was actually in the city proper, just a few blocks from the downtown area. It was an old cemetery, some of the tombstones dating back to the late 1700s. It had been here when Fawcett was just a small trading outpost on the banks of the Mississippi and had watched the city grow around it.
Despite its proximity to a densely inhabited area, the place was quiet and had an out-of-the-way feel to it. They might have been in a remote rural graveyard, Scully reflected, had it not been for the faint sounds of traffic and city life drifting over the high stone fence, just audible over the swishing of the wind through the leaves of the huge old oaks that grew there. Some of the trees might have been here as long as the graveyard itself. Scully found that thought strangely sad and disturbing. It reminded her of the piles of uprooted trees she’d seen on television earlier in the evening at their hotel, part of CNN’s awful, eternal coverage of the Seattle disaster. That had happened just 14 hours ago, Scully realized with mild surprise. It felt like years.
Trees and cities that took centuries to grow could be wiped out in minutes. There was no such thing as safety. She pulled the collar of her overcoat up around her neck. It was cold and she was tired and frightened. But she had a job to do. Seattle was gone, but the rest of the world was still here, and it wouldn’t just stand still. People had to be fed, streets had to be cleaned, and crimes had to be investigated.
Panic-induced riots had broken out in major cities all over the world. Oddly, from what she’d seen on television, Gotham City was one of the few major population centers that had been spared this phenomenon. She supposed the citizens had taken a “thank God it isn’t us this time” attitude. She wondered what Bruce Wayne was doing right now.
She stood, watching her partner walk slowly back and forth in front of the open graves, peering into each one in turn. “Deja vu all over again,” Mulder said. “The caskets are in the same shape as the ones we saw yesterday. The lining appears to have been clawed at by whoever was inside. So, where do we go from here? We know it isn’t our boy Johnson. He’s still safely locked up.”
“He wasn’t locked up yesterday,” Scully pointed out.
“But he WAS a thousand miles away, more or less,” Mulder countered. “Maybe he could raise the dead, but I doubt he could be in two places at the same time.”
“Mulder, I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you reject an impossibility as a possibility in an investigation.”
“I’ve probably been influenced by this chick I hang out with. She’s a scientist, see. A real no-nonsense, by-the-book stickler for logic.”
“’Chick?’ Since when do you use words like that to describe women?”
“I was going for shock value,” he replied, giving her a sad, tired smile, which she returned. Mulder sighed. “You know who we could use right now? The Batman. He could tie this thing up in no time.”
“You may be overestimating me,” came a voice from the darkness beyond the lamplight.
Mulder and Scully both turned quickly to face the direction from which the voice had come. They had both drawn their guns. They peered into the darkness but saw nothing thanks to the glow from the lamp. The voice came again, this time from behind them:
“Would you mind putting those things away? I’ve told both of you how I feel about them.”
Mulder, recognizing the voice at last, holstered his weapon. Scully let her arm drop, but held on to her gun. Mulder smiled a little, squinting at he spot from which the voice seemed to have come. He couldn’t see or hear anything, but he said, “Is that you?”
A dark figure moved from the gloom into the light. “Of course. You realize, don’t you, that anyone in the world could truthfully answer ‘yes’ to that question. You should be more specific.” The figure came closer.
“I’ll be damned,” Mulder said. It was him all right. He looked like a man-sized piece of darkness come to life, detached from the rest of the night beyond the lighted circle. The blackness was broken only by the yellow oval on the chest and the fainter pale blur of the mouth and jaw beneath the cowl.
“Speak of the devil,” Mulder said as he stepped over to shake hands with The Batman.
“These are bat ears, not horns.”
I know,” Mulder replied. “But, y’know, they don’t really LOOK like a bat’s ears. Bats’ ears are more ...”
“Mulder,” Batman said, “let’s skip the journey into absurdity. I’m here on very serious business. I expect you are too.”
“Yeah,” Mulder said. “Yeah, we are. Uh, you know my partner, I believe?”
“Yes,” Batman said, nodding at Scully. “Nice to see you again, Agent Scully.”
“Nice to see you, too,” she replied, finally putting her pistol away, satisfied that this was indeed who it seemed to be. “What brings you so far from home?”
“This. These graves. I don’t know why the FBI is involved, unless you know more than I think you do about the kids who were buried here. I’d have thought this would be a matter for local law-enforcement.”
“Well,” Mulder said, “this is just the latest in a series.” He quickly related the previous day’s events to The Batman. “What I can’t figure,” he concluded, “is why these kids were ... uh, necromanced. It seems highly unlikely that they would have been members of the Millennium Group, they were murdered rather than committing suicide. ... None of it adds up.”
“I’m afraid it does,” Batman said. “These were not ordinary kids. This is bad. Very bad. Probably worse than anything any of us has ever encountered.”
Mulder’s eyebrows went up. “Even worse than the last time we met? What could be worse than the original Jack the Ripper making himself immortal?”
“Mulder,” the Batman said evenly, “this will make the original Jack the Ripper, along with the Boston Strangler, the Son of Sam, the Yorkshire Ripper and Mr. Zsasz seem like a pleasant afternoon’s diversion.” He proceeded to explain why Billy Batson, Mary Bromfield and Freddy Freeman were so special. The color had drained from both of the agents’ faces long before he finished.
“That,” Mulder managed to say, “is what I would categorize as a very, VERY bad thing. A 10 on the Bad Things scale.”
“Try eleven,” Batman replied. “Or higher. You remember my colleague who gave us a ‘ride’ into Gotham last year? Each one of these ‘kids’ is easily as powerful as he is. Maybe more. And there are three of them.”
“Lord. And you think they may have been responsible for Seattle?”
“It’s possible. If they wanted to, they could take Seattle—or any other city for that matter—off the map before breakfast. Which is just what happened. And I’ve saved the worst for last. Their power comes from magic.”
Mulder winced and Scully rolled her eyes.
They were all silent for a moment, the only sound the breeze moving through the trees and gently ruffling the Batman’s cloak.
“There’s something else I’m concerned about,” Batman said after a time. “Tell me, have either of you heard of The Spectre?”
Scully nodded. “Wasn’t he one of the old-time superheroes? From the’40s? He had sort of a ghost motif, right? I thought he was dead.”
Batman actually laughed, but it was hollow and a little frightening. “Oh, yes. He’s dead all right.”
“I tried doing some research on him once,” Mulder put in. “We had a stack of cases involving anomalous deaths in the early ‘70s. People being turned into wood and sawed up, that kind of thing. There was a crooked fortune-teller that got turned into glass and then tipped over.” He ignored the look Scully gave him and forged ahead. “There were rumors that The Spectre was involved. But I came up blank. The FBI files on all the old Justice Society members are sealed until the year 2055. And, in case you’re interested,” he said directly to the Batman, “the files on the Justice LEAGUE are so far above Top Secret, I doubt even the Director has seen them. Of course, I have no idea what the DEO might have. I sometimes think they outrank the President.”
“I don’t know if that’s a comfort or not,” Batman replied.
“Don’t worry. I don’t think they even HAVE one on you. You being an ‘urban legend’ and all.”
“That is a comfort.”
“Wait just a second,” Scully interjected, gesturing with her hands. “Let’s back up here. Are you saying that this Spectre ... really was ... is ... whatever ... a ghost? Next thing you know, you’ll be telling me the ‘Martian Manhunter’ is actually from Mars.”
Batman sighed. “Regarding your question about The Spectre, yes and no. The story’s a bit complicated.” He pointed at the cross hanging around Scully’s neck. “I take it that’s not just for show? You have religious convictions?”
Scully nodded slowly, wondering where this was heading, not really wanting to find out.
“Did you ever wonder,” Batman went on, “what happened to God between the Old and New Testaments? His temper seemed to improve considerably, right?”
Scully nodded again.
“Well, The Spectre is actually the vengeful side of God’s personality,” the Batman went on, as calmly and matter-of-factly as though he were explaining how cats get hairballs. “It was sundered from the rest several centuries ago. It has existed since the beginning of civilization, meting out its own version of justice. The thing is, it needs a human host. Or, rather, the spirit of a dead human, to anchor it to our world. Don’t worry, Agent Scully, I felt the same way you do when I first heard the story. Theology is not my strong suit, and neither is magic. When the two are combined, it’s all I can do to keep my head above water. Mulder, I assume you have no problem with it?”
“Nope,” Mulder said. “It all sounds fine to me.”
“I figured it would. Scully, I further assume you dismiss this in its entirety. I don’t blame you. I don’t believe a word of it myself. Which does not change the fact that it’s all true.
“Anyhow, The Spectre’s last host did ‘die’ recently—that is to say, he was finally allowed to pass on to the afterlife. The Spectre has a new host now. A man I don’t trust any further than I can throw an automobile. Which I CAN’T do, by the way.
“He used to be a good man. He used to be Green Lantern, in fact. But something bad happened to him and he ... didn’t handle it very well. He went insane, changed his name to Parallax. He was at the bottom of a crisis we called ‘Zero Hour’ a couple of years ago. He played with the time stream, tried to restructure reality to his own liking. There were lots of temporal anomalies involved. You may have experienced some of the effects, though you probably don’t remember them very clearly now.”
Mulder recalled a particular day, a very bad Monday ... a ruptured waterbed, a bank robbery, a bomb ... a strange, pale girl who insisted she had met him before ... a sequence of events repeating itself over and over and over, until the strange girl put a stop to it.
Batman continued, “We put a stop to that, and he supposedly reformed, redeemed himself. But I still don’t trust him. Near-absolute power corrupted him once. The Spectre entity may have even more power than he usurped as Parallax. If this Millennium Group of yours is trying to bring about the Apocalypse, I’m sure The Spectre will be getting involved sooner or later. And, as far as I’m concerned, that’s tantamount to putting out afire with gasoline.”
Batman drew a deep breath, let it out slowly. “However. ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’ You see,” he said, turning to Mulder, “even the devil may quote Scripture. Anyhow, the Spectre has yet to rear his head and we have enough on our plate as it is.” He glanced at Mulder, then at Scully.
“You have any objections to working together on this?”
“Hell no,” Mulder said. Scully shook her head. As Batman nodded, Mulder spoke again. “Just one thing, though. From everything I’ve heard about you—which admittedly isn’t much, you do a damn good job of covering your tracks—you’re something of a loner. Hell, you’re the ORIGINAL loner. Outside your immediate circle, I mean. You don’t have much of a reputation for trusting or working with anyone other than your own handpicked allies. So, why us?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Why us? You hadn’t known me for 20 minutes before you let me come along when Scully was abducted—sorry, KIDNAPPED—by Two-Face. I could see how shocked Commissioner Gordon was. I have a theory, if you’d care to hear it.”
Batman nodded sharply. “Go ahead.”
“I’m a criminal profiler, you know,” Mulder began. “But profiling doesn’t necessarily have to be applied to criminal behavior. Any kind of—pardon the word I’m about to use—aberrant behavior can be grist for the profiler’s mill. And, no offense, but dressing up in a bat costume and fighting crime is pretty far off the beaten track.”
“A point I conceded to you a few months ago, as I recall.”
“That’s right. Do you remember the first thing you said to me when we met?”
“Yes. I said, ‘Be careful with this thing, Agent Mulder. You could get hurt,’ in reference to your gun, which I had just relieved you of.”
Scully snickered and Mulder shot her a look. “After that, I mean, “ he continued. “You knew my name, my assignment, what I was doing in Gotham. You’re thorough. I’ll bet you knew quite a bit more than that about me that night, didn’t you? You knew about my sister even before I told you, right?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And you knew about my work. You knew how far outside the mainstream I really am, in spite of my position with the Bureau. I’m guessing that reminded you a little of someone you know? Guy about so tall, black cape, points on his head he thinks look like bat ears?”
Silence from the dark, cloaked figure. Mulder felt a little nervous now, but forged on. “You responded to something you learned about me. Maybe more than one thing. I’m not going to ask you to confirm or deny anything, but I’ll bet you lost someone once, just like I did my sister. I’ll bet that’s why you do what you do. We’re not that different, are we? You have
your Batcave, I have my office in the basement.”
Batman glanced at Scully, who was looking at him. They couldn’t make eye contact because of the Batman’s opaque white eye shields, but he had a pretty good idea of what she was thinking. She knew the truth about him. She had figured it out months before, in No Man’s Land, and she had kept it to herself. Mulder’s analysis was coming awfully close to that truth. But that was because he was good at what he did, Batman knew. Scully might be afraid right now that he, Batman, thought she’d revealed something to her partner. He knew she hadn’t, but there was no way for him to reassure her at the moment.
“Maybe,” Batman said to Mulder. “Everything you say might be right on the money. Perhaps I did respond to what I learned about you and Agent Scully and the things that have happened to you both over the years. And perhaps the impressions I formed were reinforced when I met you in person. I don’t trust easily, or lightly. But I haven’t lost the capacity to do so.
“And sometimes I NEED to. Tell me, Mulder, did you apply your profile to yourself? I noticed you were pretty quick to accept someone to whom you referred as ‘an anonymous man in a bat costume.’ Your logic cuts both ways. Thirty minutes after we met, you were trusting me with your life. Is that typical of you?”
“Hm. Well, you’ve got me there. No, it isn’t.”
“So, let me ask you: Why did YOU do it? Why me?”
Mulder shrugged. “I ... I don’t know, exactly. I just ... trusted you. I didn’t have a single logical reason to, but I did. Scully, Did you want to say something? Perhaps to the effect of since when do I need a logical reason to do anything?”
“No,” Scully said. “You aren’t an idiot, Mulder. You always have a logical reason for what you do—or at least what you believe to be a logical reason. And I have to admit, I responded the same way you did to our friend here.” And then some, she added to herself.
“So, Mulder said to Batman. “What you’re saying is ... we just hit it off?”
Batman held his hands out, palms upward. “Sometimes, Mulder, the truth is as simple as that. I’m a very good judge of character. I have to be. If I weren’t, I would have been dead years ago. When I met you, I believed you were worthy of my trust. You too, Agent Scully. And I was right.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Mulder said. “You’re saying you LIKE us, aren’t you? That we’re buddies?” He ignored the poke in the ribs Scully gave him.
“I didn’t say that. And I don’t have ‘buddies.’”
“But you do like us?”
“You’re competent, you’re honest, you’ve maintained your integrity in the face of overwhelming adversity. I admire that. I respect it.”
“Yeah, but...” Scully finally poked him hard enough to bring a yelp of pain. “Let it go, Mulder,” she said. “You can work on reaching the Batman’s inner child after we deal with the current mess.”
“IF we can deal with it,” Batman said, relieved to steer the conversation in another direction, and grateful to Scully for making it happen. She really IS remarkable, he thought. “We’re looking at forces here that I normally consider to be outside my ‘jurisdiction.’ But they appear to have been set into motion by a human agency, and THAT I can deal with. Let’s get to work.”
CHIGACO, ILLINOIS
8:49 p.m.
Three black angels hovered high in the sky above the Windy City. They were silent, these three, like dark statues floating impossibly in the crisp winter sky. One was a man, one was a woman, one was a boy. Below them, the lights of the city lay spread out in a display that would have dazzled the three had they any human emotions. There was very little of that left in them now. Once they had been sunshine itself, bright and happy and full of life and color.
They did not look at the lights below them, the stars above them or even at one another.
They waited.
For the signal to begin their work.
The lights of Chicago burned and the citizens went about their business, enjoying, suffering or sleeping through the last hours of their lives.
The three black angels waited.
OUTSIDE FAWCETT CITY
11:04 p.m.
It was a little after eleven when Frank Black arrived at the address Peter Watts had given him. Jordan was asleep in the passenger seat of the Jeep. Frank pulled into the driveway and shut off the engine, sat for a while listening to the ticking and popping as the hot metal under the hood cooled down. Audible just above that was the gentle, rhythmic breathing of
his daughter.
The house was a box, a whitewashed, two-story, nondescript piece of work that could have been built at any time during that past 50 years. It was just like all the other houses surrounding it in this suburb of Fawcett.
Nothing remarkable about it at all. Except to Frank. He could feel sickness and malevolence radiating from the place.
The house was quiet and dark and there were no other vehicles parked nearby. Frank had debated with himself on the wisdom of coming here, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do. Was it a trap? Maybe. But Watts had sounded sincere. And even if it was a trap, what could Frank do? Peter Watts had already destroyed a city, if his story was to be believed, with the promise of more to come. Frank Black couldn’t fight that kind of power. But maybe, somehow, he could fight the man behind it Maybe he could kill Peter Watts, as he should have done months ago. By letting Watts live, Frank had condemned the city of Seattle to death. It wasn’t logical to feel that way, he knew, but he couldn’t help it. He had to make it right, as best he could. Even if it cost him his life, and even if it cost the life of his daughter. The kind of world Peter Watts was trying to make wouldn’t be a fit place for Jordan to grow up.
He scooped the girl up in his arms without waking her, opened the door of the Jeep and got out. He approached the quiet house slowly. There was no sign of habitation. A brief movement caught his eye in one of the upper windows. He noticed for the first time that the second-floor windows were all barred. He wasn’t sure he’d actually seen anything, but he had the
impression that a curtain had been drawn back for just a fraction of a second and a face had peered down at him. A bald man with buck teeth and thick-lensed glasses. But it was only a flash. Had it been real or was it one of Frank’s “visions?” He couldn’t tell.
He moved up the front steps, across the dark porch. He knocked at the door with his free hand.
Silence.
Then sound.
The door opened.
Peter Watts stood there, backlit by a single, shadeless lamp. For a moment, Frank was lost. Images raced through his mind. Three children, poisoned as they ate. Then dirt, piles of soft, fresh dirt, and a shovel flashing in moonlight. A phrase, muttered over and over again, and then a command. “Say the words.” Three flashes of lightning and in the cold cemetery suddenly there were three monsters. Three black angels.
The rush of impressions ended, leaving Frank swaying slightly, clutching Jordan. He was cold, all the way to his bones, and tired.
“Frank,” said Peter Watts.
“I’m here,” Frank replied.
“I’m glad. Please, come inside.” Watts held the door and Frank went in, avoiding physical contact with his former friend.
“You’re looking well, Frank,” Watts said, as though they were a couple of old college buddies meeting after a few years. The two men sat facing one another in large, overstuffed armchairs in the living room. The room was lit by a small lamp and several candles. The windows were covered with heavy black drapes. Jordan lay on a sofa, still asleep.
“Why did you do it, Peter?” Frank asked. “HOW did you do it?”
Sitting here, now, face-to-face, it was impossible to believe that this man, whom Frank had once trusted and considered a friend, had gone so bad. It just couldn’t be.
“Is that important, Frank?” Watts asked softly.
“I’d like to know.”
Watts nodded. “Maybe that’s best. Maybe if you see what is happening you’ll understand what you must do. This is the culmination, Frank, of everything the Millennium Group has done for the past thousand years. ‘And a strong angel took up a stone, as it were a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying “With this violence will Babylon, that great city, be overthrown, and will not be found any more.”’ The time has come. The angels are here. Babylon will die.”
“Peter, this is ... I just can’t ...”
“I want to show you something, Frank. Please, come with me.” Frank glanced quickly at the sleeping form of his little girl. “She’ll be okay, Frank. Nothing will happen to her, I promise.”
The two men stood. “I don’t know what these ‘angels’ are, Peter, but there are people who can stop them. Stop you.”
“I don’t think so,” Watts replied, shaking his head and smiling sadly. “In the months since I last saw you, I’ve been busy assembling a collection. Holy relics, Frank. I can deal with any opposition. That’s what I want to show you. Follow me.”
Peter Watts led Frank down a short hallway to a door. The basement, probably, Frank thought. Watts took a ring of keys from his pocket and unlocked the door. The steps were shrouded in gloom, but from somewhere below came a faint green glow. Frank blinked several times, trying to adjust his vision.
“It’s just down here. Take my hand.”
“No. I’m okay.” Frank groped for a handrail, found it. The two men descended in silence.
At the bottom of the steps, they rounded a corner. The green glow became much brighter and Frank could see its source.
It was a man. Or something shaped like a man, at any rate. The figure was up against the far wall of a small alcove, erect but slumped. The arms dangled at its sides and the knees buckled. Frank saw that it was pinned to the wall with something, a shaft of wood.
“Peter, what --?”
The figure, Frank could now see, wore a long green cloak and hood. The green glow came from a circle on its chest, from the middle of which protruded the shaft of wood. Its skin, if that’s what it was, was waxy and white as chalk. It twitched now and then and moaned softly, as though in troubled sleep.
“My God,” Frank said in a whisper. “Is that --?”
Watts nodded. “The Spectre, Frank. The most powerful paranormal being on earth. Do you see now? Are you beginning to understand?”
“How did you do this? What is that thing in his chest?”
“The Spear of Destiny. The most powerful relic on the planet. It pierced the side of Christ as he hung on the cross.”
“I know what the Spear of Destiny is,” Frank said with some irritation.
“Then you understand what’s in play here. The time is now, Frank. The Spear isn’t the only relic in my control. I believe I’m ready for anything anyone might throw at me. Amazon princesses, Atlantean kings ... even archangels. This is who we are. This is what we do. Will you join me at last?”
Frank Black sighed heavily. “I don’t think so, Peter.” He turned swiftly, removing the pistol from inside his jacket and pointing it at Watts. “This ends right here.” No more talking, Frank thought. No more explanations, no more pleas, nothing. He pulled the trigger seven times, emptying the clip.
Peter Watts stood before him, unharmed.
“I thought you might try that. I understand, really I do. But it’s too late for any of that. The time for that was months ago, and you didn’t do it. You can join me now or you can die.”
“I’m not going to join you. You’re sick, Peter. You need help.”
“No, Frank. You need help. But it’s too late, isn’t it? You’ll never understand. You’re an infidel. You cling to ideas that have no meaning in the world to come. I hate to do this. I’m going to show you one more thing. I don’t expect it to sway you. But I want you to see.”
“God damn you, Watts,” Frank said, raising his arm, intending to use the empty pistol as a club. “I WILL kill you.”
“No. You’re too late for it to do any good anyhow.”
Frank felt himself gripped from behind. A pair of hands, so cold he could feel the chill through the sleeves of his thick leather jacket, gripped his arms, twisting them behind his back. The useless gun clattered to the floor. Frank strained to look over his shoulder at whoever—whatever was holding him.
It was the face he thought he’d glimpsed in the window. A short, bald man in a lab coat. His skin was post-mortem purple and his eyes glowed yellow behind the Coke-bottle lenses of his glasses. “Oh, no,” Frank said.
“Bring him this way,” Watts said to the creature holding Frank. The little group moved away from the alcove where The Spectre was trapped and walked down a short, dark corridor. The keys came out again and another door was unlocked.
This room was almost totally bare, the walls unpainted wood, the floor concrete. It was lit by a single glaring bulb hanging from a wire in the ceiling. The only ornamentation, if one could call it that, was a red circle painted on the floor in what looked like, and probably was, blood.
Human or animal, Frank couldn’t tell.
Watts unbuttoned and removed his shirt, dropping it in a corner and taking something out of a small wooden crate. A garment of some kind, a red sweater, Frank thought. Watts pulled it over his head. It was far too small for him and some of the seams along the side gave way. He went to the center of the circle and began to speak:
“I am the resurrection and the life. Whosoever believeth in me ...”
“STOP IT!” Frank shouted hoarsely. He didn’t know what Watts was up to, but he didn’t like it one bit. “SHUT UP!”
But Peter Watts continued his chant. Finally, after what seemed like hours, he stopped. He raised his head, spread his arms, and said a single word:
“Begin.”
From upstairs, Frank heard the shattering of glass and the splintering of wood. Two voices, one male, one female, shouted something he couldn’t understand.
“Jordan!” Frank cried.
At one minute past midnight on January 2, 2000, the three black
angels hovering patiently above the city of Chicago began their descent from
the heavens.
JOLIET, ILLINOIS
12:02 a.m.
On the whole, Felix Faust was feeling a lot more cheerful than he had in a long, long time. Knowing that you are condemned to hell when you die is not conducive to restful sleep or general enjoyment of life. But now he had a chance. To change things. To rearrange the order of the universe and avoid his sentence.
All thanks to his new friend, Peter Watts.
Things were going very well indeed. He had just hung up the telephone in the warehouse Watts had rented for him. A cold, anonymous voice had spoken three words that had filled Faust with joy.
“Constantine is dead.”
Faust had giggled like a child. He’d been worried about Constantine. The Englishman always seemed to know what was going on and had an annoying need to involve himself in it.
That threat was gone.
Faust moved through the gloomy warehouse, running his hands over the crates spaced neatly around the concrete floor. He could FEEL the power radiating from the objects inside. THIS time would be different. THIS was some serious magic.
This time, the Justice League would die.
black centipede creeping dawn
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