Justice League of America - Batman: The Stone King by Alan Grant (best english novels to read .txt) 📗

Diana nodded slightly toward the main body of the party. The ambassador himself was on the small dance floor, his movements jerky and uncoordinated compared with the lithe grace of the pretty model he danced with. Vasily's girlfriend, Diana noted.

A group of wealthy Silicon Valley investors was animatedly swapping information with Vasily's senior staff, and a gaggle of the younger guests were laughing loudly as they grouped around the punch bowl.

"Ah, if you were only a beautiful princess, that would be enough," Vasily told her with easy charm. His gaze flicked down to acknowledge her costume. "But you are also a super hero, ambassador from the ancient gods and goddesses to the atheists of our modern world. If I were you, I would most certainly be bored."

Diana glanced outside. The blue light was gone. A car pulled up, and a couple of latecomers crunched across the gravel to the front door. There was obviously no threat.

Diana turned away from the window as Vasily reached out to take her hand.

"Come, we will dance," he said with imperial authority, a man clearly not used to being refused. "I am sure our host will have some Russian music for us."

Diana smiled and followed him through the throng.

Outside, the prowling cat's attention had been caught by something near the end of the driveway. A small globule of blue light hovered in the air, darting between the trees, heading toward the lot next door. Motionless, the cat waited behind a neatly trimmed Japanese cherry tree, its eyes glinting with anticipation.

The blue light moved closer, and the cat leaped from its hiding place, one paw reaching up to slash it with unsheathed daws. As the cat connected with its prey, the globule pulsated suddenly and pain shot up the animal's leg. The cat gave an indignant screech, men turned tail and bounded back up the drive.

As if satisfied, the light bobbed and continued on its way.

St. James's Church had stood on this spot for a century and a half, long before the street had a name and the mansions were built. It was a small, compact building with barely enough space to hold the Sunday congregation, but its graveyard was immense.

The blue light zigzagged between some maple saplings, then arced over the wooden panel fence that separated the garden from the cemetery. As it hovered six feet above the neatly dipped grass between the sea of tombstones, lines of force began to emanate from its interior, like tiny streaks of lightning, the energy lines darted through the burial ground, homing in on the graves.

As the light touched each grave marker it expanded and brightened, causing a tracery of fine blue veins to sparkle and spread across the tombstones. An eerie silence fell, broken only by the hooting of a nearby owl and the occasional muffled peal of laughter from the party next door.

Suddenly, the lawn in front of one tombstone began to ripple slightly, as if something was trying to force its way up from below. A skeletal hand burst through the surface with sudden force, knocking a long-dried bunch of flowers off the grave. The ground heaved and buckled as, a hundred years after it had been laid to rest, a corpse began to hoist itself out of the ground.

Throughout the graveyard, the scene was repeated a score of times and more. Long-dead bodies, festooned with scraps of moldering grave-clothes, hauled themselves out of what should have been their final resting place. Their bony limbs jerked and shuddered spastically as they rose to their feet, eye sockets empty and sightless.

Responding to some unseen signal from the still-hovering globule of light, the zombie corpses turned as one and began to shuffle toward the mansion next door.

Joe Krane, the Westers' security guard, had heard the cat's scream. Karnak, it was called, a reference to Horace Wester's time as U.S. ambassador to Egypt. Joe always carried a couple of cat treats in his pocket when he was on night patrol, and over the months he and Karnak had become good friends. He called the cat's name now, unwrapping a fish-flavored treat–Karnak's favorite. But tonight the cat didn't come running to greet him.

There was a loud crash from a thick patch of rhododendrons that skirted the fence between Wester's property and the church. Puzzled, Joe moved toward the noise, playing his flashlight at ground level. Maybe Karnak had caught that squirrel he'd been stalking for weeks.

A dreadful stench assailed his nostrils, and Joe fought down the impulse to gag. Surely the cat hadn't dug up something in the graveyard? Pinching his nose against the pungent smell of decay, Joe cautiously pushed his way into the bushes.

"Karnak?" he whispered.

A vision of unspeakable horror appeared in his flashlight–a skeleton with a grinning skull, scraps of rotting flesh still clinging to its frame. Joe opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came.

Before he could move, skeletal hands reached out from the darkness, grabbing at his arms and torso. Bony fingers closed around his throat, tightening with incredible strength until the world started to spin. Within seconds, blackness claimed him.

Inside, Vasily and Wonder Woman had just finished their dance. Diana couldn't honestly say that she was enjoying the party, but she comforted herself with the knowledge that she was doing her duty. Her mother, Queen Hippolyta of Themyscira, had appointed Diana ambassador to Man's World. It was her task to mingle with people, to share the millennia-long philosophy of the Amazon race, and to foster peace wherever she could.

Horace Wester came over to join them, red-faced from his efforts on the dance floor. He accepted a glass of punch, eager to discuss with Vasily the new joint-enterprise businesses they intended setting up in Moscow and New York. While the two men launched into a mutual tirade against over-enthusiastic government regulation, Diana smiled and made her excuses to leave.

The smash of breaking glass momentarily drowned out the Duke Ellington track playing on the stereo. Conversation died as party