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

Jenny moved away from the aperture, one hand reaching to steady herself against the pyramid face. Above, the half-moon's light cast an eerie glow. "Peter!" she shouted. "Peter, where are you?"

But the only reply was the night wind soughing through the cottonwood trees on the far side of the valley.

In the chamber, Len Dors's brow furrowed as he saw the wide, dark stain on the left side of Mills's chest. He angled the flash beam to get a better view. The stain was blood. The professor's jacket and sweater had been torn away, and the flesh of his chest had been gouged open to expose his rib cage.

Len doubled over, vomiting painfully on the chamber floor, when he realized the professor's heart was missing.

CHAPTER 3

Fear Is a Gift

Gotham City, October 24

Seven p.m., and the streets of downtown Gotham were all but empty.

Most of the day people had gone, on the exodus of buses and cabs and trains and subways that every evening carried office workers and store assistants, city tycoons and street vendors, home to the suburbs. The city was theirs during daylight only.

When night fell, it was as if a new species ventured out from its hiding places to take over the streets.

Within an hour, downtown would be buzzing with life again. The bars and restaurants would fill up, crowds would stream toward the theaters and night-clubs. Malefactors would begin making their illicit plans, and the cops on patrol would check their guns and ammunition.

But not quite yet. The limbo would last for an hour or so, as late workers straggled home, and the night people prepared themselves for the hours of darkness.

A hundred feet above Kane Avenue, Batman moved through the city like a wraith. Time and again a grapnel flew from his hand, anchoring itself on a flagpole, or the cornice of a building, or one of the thousands of grimacing gargoyles mat adorned the rooftops. Then he would dive from his perch, swinging on the grapple's attached bat-line, reveling in the chill night air as he headed inexorably for his next landing.

He stopped for a minute every now and then, balancing deftly on some precarious ledge, raising his night binoculars to the slits in his mask, scanning the quiet roads below for signs of trouble. He didn't expect to find much–it was still too early–but he went through the routine anyway. In a city like Gotham, it was virtually impossible to predict where trouble would erupt next.

Movement drew his gaze to the fringes of the Clock District. In contrast to most of downtown, here there were hundreds of people out and about. Of course, Batman concluded, there was a major All-Faith religious meeting tonight at the Gotham Cathedral. At a similar meet a couple of weeks earlier, the worshipers had witnessed what the newspapers later called a "spontaneous miracle." Listening to the praises and prayers offered up by John Consody, the charismatic preacher, a blind man found that his sight had returned.

"Faith is the key," Consody told his congregation. "Just have faith, and you too can move mountains!"

Maybe he's not so wrong, Batman thought. The human mind is an amazing thing.

But ultimately, the only thing Batman had faith in was himself.

After the dam burst, Batman had reported his suspicions about the substandard materials to one of the few people he called a friend–Jim Gordon, commissioner of the Gotham Police Department. Two highflying executives from the company that had built the dam a decade ago were under arrest, with charges pending. Several more employees were being interrogated as to their role in the scandal that had so nearly caused disaster. It might take a long time, but eventually justice would be done.

And justice was something that Batman pursued with every fiber of his being.

Batman replaced the infrared binoculars in their pouch in the Utility Belt that circled his waist. There was nothing here that required his services. At least, not above ground.

He swung himself up over the parapet of a building and dropped lightly to his feet beside the small array of lights that acted as a guidance beacon for aircraft heading to Gotham Field. Quickly, he popped the catch on another of his belt's pouches and pulled out a sheet of paper. Unfolding it, he bent to study the map of the Gotham City sewer system.

He'd memorized it years earlier, but this was the latest version. It showed all the new tunnels, constructed as part of the city's rolling program to replace the original nineteenth-century sewer system. Although a technical marvel in its time, it had long since passed its use-by date. The brick-lined tunnels were crumbling, the old iron pipework was rusted and leaking, and the budget for emergency repairs marched steadily upward every year.

The map also showed those old tunnels that had either collapsed or been closed down and were no longer viable. There was a whole network of them underneath Gotham Cathedral, and that was where Batman was headed.

Otis Flannegan was down there somewhere, hidden in that maze of tunnels, with the loot he'd stolen in a series of daring robberies during the past few weeks.

Otis Flannegan: the Ratcatcher.

Where he found Flannegan, Batman knew he'd also find his "pets." Rats. Tens of thousands of them.

Batman folded the map into a small square and stashed it away. He readjusted his bat-line, then kicked off backward over the parapet and dropped quickly down the side of the building, his cape billowing around him like the wings of some hell-spawned demon.

He landed in a dingy alley. Teenage vandals had smashed the streetlights, and the local restaurants used the alley as a convenient–if illegal–dump. Black plastic trash bags were piled five feet high, the stench of their rotting contents filling the narrow area. There was no one around.

Batman smoothly levered up the manhole cover at the side of the alley. He went in feetfirst, then replaced the cover behind him before scrambling down the rusting iron rungs set in the