by Greg Cox
Standing in the darkened street, she looked around desperately, unsure where to turn. Most of the local shops and business had closed hours ago. The late-night traffic was sparse. A few cars sped past, not wanting to stop for a crazy, disheveled woman shrieking in the street. This being Gotham, she could hardly blame them.
“Miss Nesko?” a man emerged from the back of a nondescript utility truck parked at the corner, and instinctively she shrunk back. He held up a badge. “Officer Mason. What’s happening?”
A woman followed him out of the van. Claire realized that the GCPD must have posted the officers to keep watch from the outside. Not that it had done any good.
“The Talon!” She ran toward them. “He’s in the house! He killed the other police officers. Nightwing is fighting him!”
“Crap!” Mason shot an urgent glance at his partner as he drew his sidearm from a holster beneath his jacket. “Get her into the van, pronto! And call for reinfor—”
A knife came out of nowhere, spearing his eye. He crumpled to the pavement, already dead.
“Dan!” His unnamed partner gaped in horror, right before another blade struck her in the throat. She dropped to the ground, choking on her own blood. Unlike Mason, she did not die instantly.
“No, no, no…” Claire backed away from her dead and dying rescuers. Trembling, she looked back over her shoulder in time to see the Talon jogging toward her.
“Alone at last,” he said. “No more playing hard to get. How about we go someplace where we can have a private conversation, without all these third wheels cramping my style?” He crossed the street toward her. “I’m thinking maybe a fireplace chat… with you as the fire.”
Her gaze darted toward Mason’s gun, which was lying on the pavement only a few yards away. Could she possibly snatch it up in time to defend herself? She had never actually fired a gun before, but maybe…?
“Uh-uh.” The Talon wagged his finger. “Don’t even think about it.”
Her last hopes evaporated. She looked around desperately, but there was no salvation in sight. She was alone and abandoned in a city of millions. A train whistle sounded in the distance.
“I’m not going to give Joanna up,” she said. “I don’t even know where she is,” she added in a wail.
“Then I guess you’re just going to have to burn for nothing.”
He was halfway across the street when an engine roared out of darkness. A pair of blinding headlights flared to life, catching the Talon in their high-beams. He spun toward the lights as the Batmobile accelerated, its matte-black finish and tinted windows giving it the look of speeding shadow. The vehicle slammed into the Talon, knocking him through the chain-link fence that denied access to the train track, then stopped on a dime next to Claire. The passenger door slid open, revealing Batman at the wheel.
“Get in,” he said.
She didn’t need to be asked twice. Still shaking, she scrambled into the car beside him, not feeling truly safe until the door slid shut behind her. Déjà-vu struck her as she realized this was the second time she had sought shelter inside the Batmobile.
When did her life go insane?
“Nightwing?” Batman asked her. His eyes scanned the deserted scene around them, on the lookout for the Talon who had been flung into the shadows beyond the streetlights. Batman’s tense body language scared and confused her. The Talon had just been hit by a speeding car. He couldn’t still be a threat, could he?
“Inside,” she answered. “He saved my life, told me to run, but I don’t know what happened next, except the Talon came out of the house and Nightwing didn’t…” Had the Talon killed him too, like he had killed the police?
Something flickered briefly behind Batman’s stoic expression.
“I’m sorry—” she began.
“Don’t be.” His voice was decisive. “I’ll see to Nightwing, after we get you safely away from here.”
“But you hit the Talon at top speed. He’s toast, right?”
“I wish.” The driver’s side door slid open and he stepped outside. “Buckle up. The car will take care of you.”
“The car?”
The door slid shut, locking her inside.
* * *
“Alfred,” Batman said into his cowl’s built-in mike. “Engage remote navigation mode. Extract Claire to a secure location at once.”
“Understood, sir,” the butler replied. “And Master Richard…?”
“I’m on it.”
There was no reason to worry Alfred before the facts were in. Batman stepped away from the car as the butler took control of the wheel from the cave. The Batmobile’s engine went back into silent mode as the sleek black vehicle executed a rapid U-turn before zooming off into the night. Contingency plans already existed in case the safe house was compromised. Batman trusted Alfred to carry out those plans while he looked for Nightwing.
Hang on, Dick.
Finding Nightwing took priority over pursuing the Talon, but anxiety over his former ward’s safety did not impede his vigilance. The assassin may or may not have retreated after being hit by the car. Batman remained on alert as he rushed into the violated safe house.
“Nightwing?”
Crimson footsteps, which appeared to belong to both Claire and the Talon, led him upstairs to the gym. His heart sank at the grisly tableau confronting him, which included at least two headless cops. For a moment he feared that Nightwing was past saving, as well, but then he heard a low moan coming from another corner of the gym. There he found the younger hero collapsed on the floor, bleeding from multiple wounds. One of the Talon’s trademark throwing knives still jutted from Nightwing’s chest. Anger flared. Batman wished he’d run the Talon over a few more times.
Stirring, Nightwing managed to lift his head.
“B—Batman?”
Even in distress, he knew better than to address his mentor by name in a house rigged for audio. He tried to sit up.
“Stay down.” Batman gently prevented Nightwing from rising. As triage, he assessed and ranked the wounds by severity. First-aid supplies from his belt would help to staunch the bleeding, but Nightwing clearly needed more serious medical attention as soon as possible. Stitches and a blood transfusion at the very least, perhaps even surgery. For a moment, he regretted sending the Batmobile away, but he knew that had their situations been reversed, Nightwing would also have put Claire’s safety first.
“Claire?” Nightwing said.
“Safe,” Batman assured him. “You did good.”
Nightwing coughed up blood. “And the Talon?”
“In the wind… for now.” Batman hoped that getting hit head-on by the Batmobile had taken the Talon out of the picture, at least for the moment, but knew that he would be back at a hundred percent all too soon. Dick had to be under Alfred’s care in the Batcave before that happened.
“Nightwing needs immediate medical assistance,” he said into the mike. “Dispatch Batwing to this site, on the double.”
“Medevac on the way, sir.”
In theory, the aircraft would be here in a matter of minutes. As he treated Nightwing’s wounds, Batman looked up to contemplate the two murdered police officers, slain by the Talon along with the cops outside—and probably a few more elsewhere in the building. He wasn’t looking forward to informing Gordon of the losses. The GCPD wasn’t perfect, but these officers had died in the line of duty. He mourned their deaths even as he silently vowed to stop this Talon sooner rather than later.
“I’m sorry,” Nightwing murmured. “He got the better of me…”
“You protected Claire. That was job one and you got it done.”
You’ve done your part, Batman thought. Let me take care of the Talon.
“Civic Spirit” was the largest statue in Gotham City. More than twenty feet tall, the gilded copper figure gazed out over the city from her perch atop the old municipal building. A crown graced her brow as she held a blazing torch aloft, not unlike Lady Liberty.
Lit by halogen spo
tlights, draped in sculpted Grecian robes, she posed barefoot atop a gleaming metal orb. Batman peered up at her from the base of the statue, his cape flapping in the night breeze, dozens of feet above the city streets.
Hello, Lydia, he thought, seeing her through new eyes.
The top of the building offered an expansive view of the city. In fact, Batman had often visited these heights during his night-time patrols, but as with the fountain back at the Manor, he had grown so accustomed to the towering figure that she’d become all but invisible to him. Tonight, however, he recognized Lydia Doyle’s increasingly familiar features in the noble countenance. According to Barbara, Percy Wright had sculpted this statue in 1922, only four years after Lydia’s disappearance. Since she would have not been available to model for “Civic Spirit,” he must have worked from preexisting sketches or studies, or perhaps even from memory. Lydia certainly was memorable.
“I’m here,” he said, seemingly to empty air. “It’s her, all right— I’m beginning to think she’s everywhere.”
“Tell me about it,” Barbara replied from the Clock Tower, where she was continuing her historical deep dive. Her voice came through clearly, while the high-tech lenses in his cowl allowed her to view whatever he did. “The more I scour the past, the more I find her—or at least her image—immortalized everywhere. She really was Miss Gotham.”
Until the city devoured her.
Or the Owls did.
Assuming they weren’t one and the same.
“We already knew how ubiquitous she was,” Barbara continued. “But, working from the notes and drafts you recovered from the cabin, I’ve been trying to reconstruct Joanna’s theory—that Percy hid a message of some sort in his sculptures, and I think maybe I’m onto something. I’m not entirely sure what it means, though.”
It was the night after the attack on the safe house. Claire was safely ensconced in Metropolis, with Nightwing serving as her escort. Dick had been reluctant to leave Gotham at this juncture, but the Talon had already gone after Claire twice, and clearly the GCPD lacked the ability to hide her from the all-seeing eyes of the Court. She would be in constant danger as long as she stayed in Gotham, and Dick needed time to recover from his wounds.
Thankfully, none of his injuries were irreversible—not even the severed tendons in his arm—but he wasn’t going to be at full fighting strength for some time. Batman wanted them both safely out of Gotham for the duration. If anybody was going to take on this vicious new Talon, it was going to be him.
“Tell me,” he said to Barbara.
“A few points of interest,” she replied, sounding like a tour guide. “Note that her crown has four points, on each of which is inscribed the image of a winged creature: a robin, a bat, a crow, and an owl. Now, traditionally, these are believed to symbolize, respectively, dawn, dusk, the countryside, and the city, and that’s always been the conventional interpretation, at least by anybody who’s actually examined the crown in the last hundred years or so.”
Batman nodded. He understood the symbolism. Owls, in particular, had long been associated with the goddess Athena, the patron goddess of a great city-state. They were symbols of wisdom as well as harbingers of death.
“But…?” he prompted.
“A Bat, an owl, a robin and a crow… as in Scarecrow? Kind of weirdly prophetic, don’t you think?”
Batman thought on that. “From the perspective of today, yes, but in Percy’s time?” he said. Nobody would make those associations back then.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s the creepy part.”
The symbols in question were barely visible from the rooftop, and too high up to be seen at all from the street, so it was small wonder they had gone unnoticed for years. Batman decided to get a closer look at that crown. Using a Batrope, he scaled the colossal statue until he was standing on its shoulder. What Barbara was suggesting seemed preposterous on the face of it, yet rather than reject it out of hand, he kept an open mind as he trained a high-powered flashlight on the four points of the crown, one at a time.
Exactly as Barbara had stated, the silhouettes of three birds and a bat were embossed on the gilded tines. He considered their placement.
“Interesting,” he mused aloud.
“What is it?” she asked.
“The crow is facing west toward the rural farmlands across the river, while the robin is facing east toward the rising dawn. Both of which fit with the traditional interpretation, but in light of what you suggested, I can’t help noticing that the bat faces north— toward the cave and the Manor, while the owl faces south toward Harbor House, the Court’s old headquarters.”
“Coincidence?” she said.
“One might think so,” Batman said, “but this is the Court of Owls we’re talking about. They’ve pushed the boundaries of what’s possible: rejuvenation, healing serums, cryogenics, and more. Still, genuine precognition seems like a stretch, even for them.”
“Yet Joanna believes that Percy’s statues hold a warning about the future,” Barbara persisted. “About an inferno that awaits Gotham.”
Batman lifted his gaze to contemplate the gleaming torch at the end of the figure’s upraised right arm. To light the way to the future—or to burn everything down?
“And the Court seems to be taking Joanna’s theories seriously,” he noted, “as they search for Percy’s mysterious elixir or formula.” Descending to the rooftop, he summoned a drone that had been hovering nearby, waiting to be called into service. He directed it to scan and photograph the statue from all directions in order to construct a flawless 3D model of “Civic Spirit” that they could study more extensively. That would be far more complete than whatever isolated still photos and illustrations currently existed.
Laser beams, glowing ruby-red in the night, shot from the drone, mapping every inch of the mammoth sculpture while Batman waited patiently for them to complete the task. As a rule, he preferred to inspect evidence physically, whenever possible, but it would be useful to have a digital copy for future reference.
He still didn’t know what this long-sought elixir was supposed to do, and that nagged at him. Certainly, given the incendiary side effects, he needed to get his hands on the formula before Vincent did. Yet given the condition of the Talon’s recent victims, might it be that the Owls already possessed it?
No, the Grandmaster’s own words indicated otherwise. Whatever Vincent had, it remained incomplete—though no less lethal.
Briefly he wondered if the formula might be hidden somewhere inside this particular statue, but the odds were against it. “Civic Spirit” was only one of many works by Percy Wright scattered throughout the city—and a “formula” could be hidden anywhere, in any number of ways. Nevertheless, he had the drone make an ultrasound scan, as well, for further examination.
“What else have you turned up?”
“How much time do you have?” she said wryly. “We’re talking parks, gardens, bridges, courthouses, museums, memorials, friezes, pylons, postcards… you name it, and that’s not even counting the art that’s been moved, stolen, misplaced, destroyed, or simply forgotten over the decades.” Her voice held a trace of fatigue, as though she had been burning the proverbial candle at both ends. “But we can start with some of the better-known public works. There are a few in particular that you might want to check out.”
“Why is that?”
“Better that you see for yourself,” she said. “I don’t want to prejudice your findings.”
Fair enough, Batman thought. “Tell me where.”
* * *
The fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel dwarfed the one back at the Manor. A nude water-bearer, nearly eight feet tall and sculpted of polished marble, posed at the center of the wide circular display, bending slightly as though about to draw water into a large ceramic ewer. Her hair was neatly braided, her expression placid, and her face and figure were Lydia’s. Not wanting to attract attention, Batman studied the figure from a shadowy ledge across the street.
Binocular lenses allowed him to inspect it at a distance.
“The story is,” Barbara said, “that this statue is based on an earlier, smaller figure that Lydia posed for not long before her disappearance. There are no owls or bats hidden anywhere, at least that I can see, but look at it closely. I want to know if you see it, too, just to be sure that I’m not letting my imagination get the better of me.”
He scanned closely, starting with the looming figure itself before moving on to her setting. Decorative fish ringed the basin, sculpted in the act of leaping in and out of the water. Their faces and tails alternated in a static procession. Rising up to greet the open air, the fish heads sported exaggerated features that struck Batman as being at odds with the classical realism of the female figure. The smiles on the grinning fish were…
Grotesque. Like those of a death’s-head.
Like Joker fish.
Years ago, the Joker had poisoned the water in Gotham harbor, resulting in a mass of hideous, toxic, mutated fish. The disfigured “Joker fish” had borne a distinct resemblance to the ones Percy Wright sculpted, many decades earlier.
“Joker fish,” he finally said aloud.
“So it’s not just me,” Barbara responded. “You see it, too.”
“Another coincidence?”
“That’s what I thought,” she said. “The Joker fish came almost a century after Percy’s time. There’s no way he could have known about it.”
Commissioner Gordon liked to say that detectives weren’t allowed to believe in coincidences. Batman was inclined to agree with him.
“Show me more.”
* * *
Next stop, the City Courthouse downtown, where a relief sculpture of “Lady Justice,” occupied the pediment above the front entrance. Accessorized with the traditional blindfold, scales, and sword, this depiction of Justice struck Batman as well-crafted but unremarkable, until he noted an odd element of the artwork.
Flanking Justice on each side were matching profiles of a bearded man, facing away from each other. Identical in every way except their orientation, the faces were divided by Lady Justice, but shared an obvious commonality. Batman recognized the deity they depicted.
