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

infrared control panel concealed behind the car's radio display. Immediately, a section of brickwork slid back, revealing a space just large enough for the Dodge to squeeze through.

The secret doorway dosed automatically behind him as the car shot inside, drawing to a halt in the deep shadows. Over the years, parts of the building roof had collapsed, falling into the interior, leaving mounds of rubble and glass heaped up on the storeroom floor.

Wayne slid out of the car, with not a trace of the limp he'd feigned that afternoon. It was almost pitch-black in here, but his movements were smooth and confident; obviously, he knew the place well.

A cursory check assured him no one had been here since he'd last taken the Dodge out in the early hours of the morning. The thick dust on the floor hadn't been disturbed, and the all-but-invisible lengths of cord that he'd threaded across the open areas were unbroken. He stepped quickly over them, carefully keeping to the brick stepping stones scattered here and there, seemingly at random, as he made for an indistinct, six-foot-high pile of rubble.

He bent suddenly, reaching underneath a twisted pile of corrugated steel panels. His fingers encountered hard, cool plastic and sought out the control buttons set into it.

The air shimmered for a moment as the hologram projector shut off. The high pile of rubble was suddenly revealed for what it really was–the sleek, menacing lines of the Batmobile, the Batman's high-tech car.

Wayne held the palm of one hand against the infrared reader pad recessed in the car door. Soundlessly, the door slid open. If he'd been an intruder, several hundred volts would have sent him on his way.

Seconds later the Batmobile shot out of the building, its massive engine barely ticking over, all of its lights running on infrared mode. It wheeled in a tight semicircle and sped toward the junction with the highway into downtown.

The man seated behind the wheel, hidden by smoked glass and steel plate, was no longer Bruce Wayne. A lightweight cowl covered his head; short, stubby, batlike ears jutted up from it. His eyes were hidden behind a mask, the bat-symbol emblazoned on his chest.

He was already doing well over a hundred miles an hour as the car hit the near-deserted highway.

Three miles, and fewer minutes, later, Batman parked in the Stygian shadows of a narrow city center alley.

The Batmobile's roof slid noiselessly open. A grapnel snaked upward, and Batman swung himself up into the nighttime rooftops. Swinging, running, and diving, never setting a foot wrong, he made his way swiftly toward Police Headquarters.

A huge electronic billboard blazed on a building roof. ONLY 2 DAYS 2 GO! its flickering neon letters declared. Beneath them was an array of grotesque masks, their features lighting up and darkening again in an eye-catching display that had been the talk of the city when it was first erected a week earlier.

MEGA-MASKS was emblazoned along the bottom of the board. WE PUT THE 'HELL' IN HELLOWEEN!

Batman grimaced as the inertia reel of his line swung him past the face of the massive billboard, his trailing cape briefly covering the winking neon lights. Halloween was far from his favorite time of year. It always seemed to draw out the worst of Gotham, as if the old legends about it being witches' night were firmly grounded in reality–as if, under their masks, people's inhibitions disappeared. And, of course, it provided the perfect cover for criminal activity.

Villains like Scarecrow always seemed to be revitalized as the autumn nights heralded the coming winter. Last year it had been the turn of Cornelius Stirk, the cannibal, who'd escaped from Arkham Asylum and brought terror to the city for days before Batman managed to return him to his padded cell.

But this year promises to be the worst of all. The unwelcome thought ran through Batman's mind. The Justice League's mightiest members gone–captured or abducted by who knows what? And me armed with only a handful of suspicions and even fewer leads.

He shrugged the nagging thought aside. Jenny Ayles had given him much to consider, and once he dealt with whatever emergency Jim Gordon was calling him to, he'd devote himself full-time to trying to piece Jenny's data into what little he already knew.

There was a sense of some grand scheme behind all the seemingly disparate events of the past month or so. It would take time and hard thought before he could begin to pin it down.

Batman flexed his ankles and knees as he dropped fifteen feet through the air, landing atop the roof of the insurance company building that stood next to Police HQ. Slightly below him, at the far end of the roof, he could see two figures waiting by the huge lamp that projected the Bat-Signal. Jim Gordon was unmistakable, his overcoat collar turned up as he hunched himself against the cutting wind that blew at this height above the city's concrete canyons. There was a dull red glow as he puffed furiously at the pipe clamped in his teeth.

Obviously fallen off the wagon, Batman thought, knowing that Gordon was having difficulty implementing his decision to quit smoking. The stress of the job made it doubly hard for the lifelong nicotine addict to break his habit.

Batman's eyes narrowed as he saw that Jim Gordon's companion was a woman. She was bundled up

in a dark cape, a scarf knotted over her hair. And it was her hair, struggling out of its covering in platinum locks, that gave her identity away.

Batman had met Madame Cassandra once before. At his wits' end while striving to bring to a close one of the Joker's insane murder sprees, he'd turned to Cassandra for help. She'd been of little assistance, but he remembered her as a sincere and serious young woman.

Not a sound betrayed him as Batman dropped down onto the lower roof. He moved through shadows thrown by the forest of air-conditioning boxes toward the waiting couple. Only when he was half-a-dozen feet away did