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

on an excitement that Batman couldn't mistake. "If the Stone King can harness natural energies to use against us, invisibility should also be within his power."

"Only one way to find out."

Batman was already striding toward the teleporter chamber, a technology any government or army on Earth would pay any price to possess. Which is why it was fitted with a number of fail-safe and self-destruct options. If it was ever found by anyone outside the Justice League, the whole Watchtower would be disabled and useless within minutes.

The duo stepped into the chamber, their recent frustration and sense of defeat nearly forgotten. There was a low hum as the machine sprang into life, and they were enveloped by a cool fluorescent glow.

Then they were gone.

CHAPTER 12

Ancient Voices

Gotham City, October 31

The pale morning sun streamed in through the hospital windows, casting a warm glow over the ward where Dr. Clay Valerian stood by Cassandra's bedside. She lay pale and still, her breathing shallow, her white-golden hair tumbled across her pillow.

A pretty young nurse the doctor hadn't seen before handed him the patient's notes. He hoped he'd be seeing her at the hospital's Halloween Hellraiser tonight. He smiled at the nurse and ran his eyes over the printed sheet attached to a clipboard.

"Found unconscious, Gotham U. lab," he read. "Cause of injuries unknown."

"Is she a student?" Valerian asked, but the nurse shook her head.

"We don't know who she is, doctor. She had no identification with her."

Valerian pursed his lips. Heartbeat, pulse rate, blood pressure–all body functions were performing normally. Every test the hospital had taken came out negative. Her only visible signs of injury were bruising and abrasions toher arm and back.

And yet she was unconscious.

Frequent blinking and rapid eye movement showed her brain was still engaged, but the possibility of undetected damage remained high.

"Could be internal cranial bleeding," Valerian mused aloud, the young nurse listening attentively, "though there are no other indicators. Nurse, arrange a CAT scan, as soon as possible."

The nurse nodded and removed the receiver from a wall-mounted telephone. She dialed a number, her gaze running absent-mindedly over the woman in the bed.

Replacing the clipboard on the bedframe, ogling the young nurse for a final time, Clay Valerian moved on to his next patient.

Cassandra was a young girl again.

She was perched on her grandmother's knee, safe and secure in the love that radiated from the old woman. Grandma smelled of lavender, and her deep-set wrinkled eyes made her look both ancient and wise. They were seated on the old basket chair in the apartment's window recess, looking out on the afternoon street life of Gotham City.

Grandma pointed to a man hurrying by on the other side of the street, his head bowed, eyes riveted on the ground despite the speed of his pace.

"A man in a hurry," Grandma said. "Not alert to what's around him. He's either deep in thought or worried sick. See his shoes, Cassandra–scuffed and worn. That overcoat may be shabby, but once it cost a lot of money. A rich man down on his luck?"

The old lady sipped from a glass of water. "Now, do you see that woman on the corner? Her makeup's smeared. She's been crying."

Grandma could look at anyone and, with her incredible eye for detail, produce their life story. She picked up on things that were in plain sight, but which most people either didn't notice or glossed over.

"Empathy is a gift," she used to say. "But like anything else on God's good earth, you can't afford to take it for granted. You have to work at it always."

Cassandra spent the happiest years of her life in that apartment with her grandmother. And now she had returned there again, to where she was safe and loved, where no bull-headed monsters roamed the streets, only men with scuffed shoes and women with tearstained faces.

A visual flash: Ourobouros, hooped in a circle, the worm that eats its own tail. The symbol of life and death eternally consuming each other.

"The cycle will complete."

The words were like knives in Peter Glaston's head. Only, it wasn't his head any longer. He was just a passenger on someone else's journey. And yet, that was his voice.

He'd gotten used to the terrible smell of corrupt flesh, hardly noticed it anymore. He'd grown used to the ice-cold terror that sometimes gripped him. But he was becoming progressively more horrified as he learned the depth and scope of his possessor's plans. Until now, it had merely been flexing its muscles, making its preparations. Its actions had seemed to be isolated incidents, with no pattern to them that Peter had been able to discern. Now, he could see what the creature had been building up to.

There was going to be a cleansing, a disaster on a planetary scale. And there was nothing Peter could do to prevent this strange consciousness, this force that thought in words and symbols that Peter didn't fully understand, from carrying through with its insane quest.

Peter felt like he was coming apart, slowly disintegrating as the parasitic spirit that had invaded him leeched away his memories, his feelings, his very personality. Sometimes he could sense the intruder combing through his life, seeking anything that would aid it in its dreams of genocide. From Peter's mind, it had learned about super heroes, science, and God only knew what else.

Increasingly, the alien was doing things that Peter didn't know about. He had a confusing memory of a fight. Could he have been in confrontation with the Batman? Where had the pain come from, the pain that burned like acid?

Still he couldn't fit the images into a coherent whole.

He knew that somehow, through ritual and sacrifice, the Stone Age sorcerer was harnessing the energies of Gaia–the Earth Mother herself. He intended to use them against the descendants of his own people.

Peter had come to only moments earlier, to find his body standing in front of a slaughtered rabbit, its entrails looped on the altar stone, warm and steaming.

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