Justice League of America - Batman: The Stone King Alan Grant (e book reader pc txt) 📖

Batman already knew of her abilities, but the pragmatic commissioner didn't. However, Jim had studied psychology, and knew that 90 percent or more of all communication took place at a level below the threshold of conscious perception. In fact, Gordon's own department increasingly used slow-motion videos of criminal interrogations to reveal far more than their words ever could. The telling of a lie could be pinpointed exactly by the film.

"The night of the attack at Gotham Cathedral," Cassandra continued, "I had a consultation with a client. I had a full-blown vision. My first ever." Her voice became husky with emotion, and she stopped for a second to compose herself. "I saw that my client was going to die at the hands of a bull-headed monster."

A shiver ran down Batman's spine, a feeling most people might have put down to fear. But Batman knew it for what it was–a signal that another piece of this unfathomable jigsaw was starting to fall into place.

"I advised my client to go home. He ignored me, and paid the price. He . . . he was crushed to death later that night at the service."

Jim Gordon frowned. It was his job to catch whoever had killed those people in the cathedral, but despite throwing every police officer he could at the case, so far he didn't have a single lead.

"That's it?" the commissioner asked Cassandra, unable to keep the disappointment from his voice.

"It was enough for me, Commissioner!" Cassandra shot back at him.

Jim accepted the rebuke with a muttered apology. Easy for him to forget how deeply and personally death always touched those affected by it. He saw a dozen or more corpses every week of his life; it was sometimes hard to remember that each one had its own tragic tale.

He turned away to fire up his pipe again, and Cassandra went on in a low voice. "Next day I went to the cathedral to pay my respects. I had another vision, much more powerful than the first." She halted to moisten her suddenly dry lips–a gesture, both men knew, that what she had experienced truly frightened her. "I saw the bull-headed man again, but this time he was gigantic. He towered over Gotham City like a god."

"Or a devil," Batman added, so softly she didn't even hear.

"Lightning came from his eyes and his hands. Buildings burst into flame. The whole city was on fire. People were dying–men and women. I could hear children screaming–"

Cassandra broke off, her shoulders heaving as sobs racked her body. Tears welled up in her eyes and poured down her cheeks. Unnoticed, Batman had taken a couple of steps closer to her. His arm extended around her shoulder, drawing her against him, letting her feel the calm strength of his body. A man who had mastered his fear.

Her sobs subsided, and she tilted her head back so she was looking up directly into the vigilante's masked eyes.

"It's going to happen," she said, as evenly as she could. "I know it's going to happen. The whole city was on fire!" She reached up to knuckle away fresh tears. When she spoke again, there was a vehement edge to her words. "You have to stop it, Batman. Somebody has to stop it!"

Jim Gordon heaved a sigh. He could have been in his snug office for the past half hour, wading through some of the paperwork that deluged him every day. "Guess I am that old fool after all," he began, but stopped as Batman spoke.

"Cassandra, what you've just told us fits very closely with another case I'm investigating. Think carefully now–" His voice was still soft, but contained the authoritative tone of a man used to getting his own way. "Was there any indication of a time scale in your vision? I mean, anything that would allow you to judge exactly when this was going to happen?"

"Why, yes." Cassandra hadn't paid much attention to the detail of what she'd seen, she'd been too traumatized by the death and destruction. But the date had been obvious. "Everyone was wearing masquerade costumes. And face masks. Halloween . . . it'll happen on Halloween."

"All Hallow's Eve." Batman's voice was grim. "We have only two days from now. . . ."

CHAPTER 9

The Stone King

Peter Glaston was alive, but dead. He still existed, his body still moved and acted, his mind still thought.

Only, it was someone else's existence that filled him, crowding Peter out until he was no more than a spectator in the theater of his own life. His body moved at the volition of an intruder. The thoughts of his conqueror blasted his own into wisps of gibbering trivia.

Glaston was still inside the hidden chamber of the Gotham pyramid. He didn't know whether or not he'd been here since he found it, because his memory seemed to be playing tricks on him. He remembered bright light, like a fountain of shining blood, erupting in Gotham Cathedral. Yet he'd never been to the cathedral. He remembered a subway train screaming down its tracks at breakneck speed, a rocketship blasting off into orbit, a man with a green ring.

He remembered dead men walking.

Something had possessed him. A spirit . . . a ghost . . . a consciousness. It had gained access the moment he fell through the ceiling of that sealed chamber, bursting into his brain like an exploding star. As if it had been lurking across the countless centuries, waiting for him.

It had made him dig like a dog in the hard-packed soil. Clutching the ancient ax in Peter's hand, it had used his lips to emit a guttural shriek of triumph. And when the blade rose and fell, burying itself deep in Robert Mills's skull, it wasn't Peter Glaston's thoughts that guided it.

He remembered Mills's blood and brains splashing over him, horrifying him to the point of violent nausea. He'd tried to vomit, but with no control over his physical self, even that was denied him.

He watched helplessly as his