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

own hand was guided to Mills's chest. The stone blade began to slice through the professor's rib cage, and Peter's nausea reached fever pitch. He had a brief, sickening memory of holding aloft Mills's heart, still pumping weakly, slippery blood dribbling down his wrist and arm. Then Peter had lost consciousness.

When he came to, it was with that mixture of fear and relief that invariably accompanies waking from a nightmare.

Thank God it's over! his mind cried with blessed relief.

But when he tried to move his hand, nothing happened. It was as if the nerve endings that interfaced between his body and his brain had been severed. He realized for the first time that he no longer owned himself, that he'd been taken over, turned into a puppet–a tool to be used at the whim of its new owner.

The terror he'd felt then abated somewhat. The blind panic that had filled him at no longer being in control of his own actions, his own mind, had gradually eased. Though he felt its malice, its malign pleasure in hurting others, whatever had taken him over seemed to bear him no evil intent. In fact, it ignored him completely, as if he was completely irrelevant to whatever it planned. Sometimes he found himself wondering if it even knew that he was still there.

Cowering in a corner of his own mind, Peter Glaston tried to fathom what had happened to him. Some kind of possession, obviously. But by what? And for what purpose?

His senses still carried information: he could feel a hairy animal pelt against his skin, hanging in loose folds over his shoulders and back. Did he really remember a field suffused with moonlight, the stone blade in his hand slicing through the jugular vein of an Aberdeen Angus bull? Was it possible he had danced in a meadow at night, a slow, shuffling counterclockwise movement, chanting obscenely as he smeared himself with the dead beast's innards?

His body reeked of stale blood, so maybe his memories were authentic. There was a weight pressing down on his head, and every now and then something warm and slick slipped from it to slither down his neck. Had he really hacked off the bull's head, crouched for an hour as he carefully skinned its flesh before setting it on over his own head? Was it blood and animal brains that dripped and slid down his body?

Peter reawakened from his reverie with a start. After a long period of inactivity, as if his possessor had been asleep, his body was moving again.

The interior of the chamber seemed to have grown, somehow. Incongruously, Peter was reminded of an old British television series he'd seen, about a space traveler whose craft was a phone booth on the outside, yet as big as a football stadium within. A tesseract, Peter recalled from his freshman science class. At least his memory was still his own.

Unless the intruder had access to his memories, too.

Twigs dipped in animal fat and set ablaze threw out a smoky light that flickered across the room interior, but failed to penetrate the deepest shadows. Peter saw shapes on the wall–spirals and sticklike human figures, lozenges and palm prints–all outlined in blood that had darkened as it dried. The remains of the bull's head lay heaped on the altar stone, giving off an indescribable stench.

Peter watched in fascinated horror as his hand, with no input from him, closed around the base of a burning, fat-soaked torch. Words that he didn't recognize, whose meaning was a mystery to him, spilled from his mouth in a guttural dirge.

His feet were bare, and the rough soil rasped against his soles. Seemingly of their own volition, they carried him deeper into the stone-lined chamber.

With a sense of shock, he saw the figures there. Totally motionless, jutting from a massive block of stone that must have weighed fifty tons, he mistook them at first for carefully carved, life-size sculptures.

He heard his own voice rise and fall, a new tone in it now, as if he were praying. His hand moved the flaming torch in slow, spiraling circles. Its guttering light fell on the figures, and Peter felt his stomach churn as he realized what they were.

The Justice League of America.

He'd seen their pictures in a dozen newspapers, watched footage of their exploits on the television news. They were even present the day the pyramid was uncovered by the dam burst.

Superman was unmistakeable in his blue costume and red cape. The dark-haired female with the tiara, a red star emblazoned in its center, was Wonder Woman. The black-and-green symbol identified Green Lantern. Peter had never seen the Flash before–any photograph of the Scarlet Speedster tended to show only a red blur–but deduced it was him from the golden lightning streak that crossed his chest.

Four of the mightiest heroes in the world . . . and Peter Glaston held them captive!

No, not me, Peter corrected himself. Whoever has invaded my mind and stolen my body. Why did I think it was me?

Somehow, the heroes' bodies had been imprisoned in the living rock, as if the stone had grown organically around them, the way that, over years, a tree will grow to envelop a nail hammered into its trunk. Their hands were free but, here and there where they touched the rock, they too seemed to be absorbed.

Only their heads and upper torsos were showing; the rest of them was buried in the solid granite. Their eyes were closed, and Peter would have thought them dead had it not been for the tiny fluttering movements of their eyelids.

Like they're in REM sleep, he thought. Rapid eye movement was one of the physical manifestations of the dreaming mind. But what does this all mean?

The pain seemed to have been burning in him for all eternity.

Huge jagged teeth pierced his midriff. He could feel them, chafing against his innards every time a muscle so much as flexed. Staying still was agony, yet even the slightest movement sent