by Greg Cox
Joanna took a moment to enjoy his discomfort.
Now you know how I felt, jerk.
* * *
Batman had the Talon pinned to roof, but only for a moment. Breaking the hold, the assassin flung his adversary off him and sprang to his feet. Wrenching the Batarang from his wrist, he angrily flung it away, then swiftly drew a sword from one of the scabbards on his back.
Gripping the sword with both hands, he swung it down on Batman’s head with enough force to crack the top of the cowl. The impact sent the hero reeling. The cowl was still intact, but another such blow and the sword might shatter both it and his skull. Staggering backward, he raised his gauntlets defensively as the Talon came at him again.
“Nice ambush,” the assassin said, “but let’s see how clever you are once your brains are splattered all over the—”
He let out a surprised shriek as Joanna jabbed the discarded Batarang into his back. Wheeling about, he backhanded her and sent her sprawling onto the surface of the roof. The blow sent her glasses flying, and she landed face-first with a grunt of pain.
“Not smart, college girl,” the Talon raged. “You’re pushing your luck.”
Thanks to the distraction, Batman was no longer on the defensive. Cracked cowl or not, he delivered a flying kick that drove his opponent away from Joanna. Then he darted between her and her attacker, determined not to let the Talon lay hands on her again. She had been through too much already.
“Why didn’t you run?” he asked.
“I’m tired of running,” she replied. “Figure I’m safer with you.”
The Talon snorted. “That’s what you think.” Reaching back with his free hand, he yanked the Batarang from his back.
“Forget them,” Vincent shouted across the roof. “I can’t rouse the pilot. I need you to fly the helicopter!”
“You’re not going anywhere, Wright,” Batman stated. “The chopper has been disabled.” The look of chagrin that crossed the man’s face was worth its weight in blue-chip stocks. With any luck, Joanna’s testimony would convict Vincent of kidnapping and connect him to several murders, as well. He wondered what other evidence was waiting inside the building.
Sirens blared in the night.
“You hear that?” Vincent bellowed. “Get me away from here. That’s an order!”
“I hear you,” the Talon said sourly. Keeping his eyes on Batman, he backed toward the aircraft. “Another time, Dark Knight. Looks like you get off easy tonight.”
“You think I’m going to let you get away so easily?” Batman said. His raised fists were clenched and ready. “Think again.”
“If you say so.”
Without warning the Talon hurled the bloody Batarang at the grounded copter. The blade punctured the fuselage and sliced through an internal fuel line. Gasoline spurted from the rupture and spilled onto the rooftop, where it streamed across the flat surface between Batman and his foes. The Talon scraped his sword against the roof to generate a spark, which ignited the flowing gas like the business end of a fuse. Instantly a trickle of flame sped toward the copter and its fuel tank. The pilot still lay where he had fallen.
“Think fast!” the Talon said.
Responding instantly, Batman whipped off his cloak and used it to beat out the flaming stream before it could reach the chopper. As he did, the Talon snatched up Wright, flinging the man over his shoulder, and leapt over the edge of the roof. Metal claws scraped loudly against the side of the building.
“Get back!” Batman shouted to Joanna. He smacked the fireproof cape against the burning fuel until he was certain the fire had been extinguished completely. Just to be safe, he pulled a canister of flame-retardant foam from his belt, and sprayed it over the fuel.
The smell of gas filled the air.
But where had the Talon and Vincent gone?
Confident that the copter wasn’t going to blow up, Batman rushed to the edge of the roof and peered at the pavement below. The Owl and the Talon were nowhere to be seen, although deep gouges in the cinderblocks tracked the path they had taken in their rapid descent to the street.
Another time, the Talon had said.
Batman let out a growl of exasperation. It seemed his final clash with the Talon would have to wait. He took solace in the fact that he had rescued Joanna from the Court. That was, perhaps, victory enough for one night. Turning, he crossed the roof to join her by the exit, where she had taken shelter from the impending blast.
“Are you all right?”
“I think so… for now.” She winced as she probed her injured nose. “Are they gone?”
“For now,” he echoed. “Joanna Lee, I presume?”
She nodded.
“Pleased to meet you,” Batman said. “We have a lot to discuss.”
MacDougal Lane, Gotham City, 1918
“Bats, cats, robins, owls…”
Lydia babbled deliriously as she crouched over her chair, scribbling frantically in yet another journal, feverishly filling the pages as though she couldn’t keep pace with the visions flooding her overheated brain. Her eyes were wild, her hair a tangle, so that she resembled a madwoman more than a model. An uneaten meal went ignored, like so many others before it. Percy looked on in dismay.
“Please, darling, you must try to calm yourself,” he pleaded. “You’re frightening me.”
Despite her many dire prophecies, Percy had not yet lost Lydia to the flames. Yet that did little to relieve his guilt as he watched her sanity burn away before his eyes. At first the journals had seemed to help her, giving her an outlet for the visions which seemed to be coming faster and faster, consuming her every waking moment.
However, that had proved only a temporary cure. She was hardly eating, barely sleeping, and found no escape from the visions even in whatever fitful slumber she managed. He had tried sedating her, just to grant her a modicum of peace, only to watch her toss and turn restlessly, muttering constantly just as she was rambling incoherently now.
“Dark night rising, birds of prey, a league of shadows, a league of justice…”
Desperate, he snatched the journal from her hands.
“Stop it, Lydia,” he demanded. “This can’t go on. You need to rest…”
“…man of steel, daughter of the demon, contract with Judas, riddle me this…”
Heedless of his entreaties, she dropped from the chair onto the floor, where she began scribbling on the floorboards. The sight of her, down on her knees like a lunatic in Arkham Hospital, shredded Percy’s heart and spirit. At a loss for what else to do, in search of something—anything—that might help him ease her pain, he began leafing through the confiscated journal.
As with previous volumes, the pages were filled with cryptic, disordered ravings, barely decipherable annotations, and, worst of all, countless sketches and drawings, each seemingly more grotesque and disturbing than the last. Freaks and monsters capered across the page. A menacing scarecrow with steaming test tubes. A scaly-skinned ogre, as much reptile as man, gnawing on human bones. A woman, alluring yet sinister, clad only in vines and thorns. A man whose face was hideously scarred on one side. Winged demons. Clay golems…
And—over and over—bats and owls and one thing more.
A woman on fire, burning alive.
Lydia’s future? He dropped to the floor and clutched her wrists. “Look at me, Lydia! You must fight this. Gain control over your visions!”
For the briefest instant his entreaties penetrated the delirium. She looked up from the floorboards. Her eyes found him, clearing so that she could actually see him through the cascade of prophecies that were driving her mad.
“I can’t help it, Percy,” she said, her voice cracked and dry. “There’s too much future to see, so much more than I can ever hold back. A darkness awaiting Gotham, sweeping over me, filling my mind. Bleak days, plagues and disasters, crisis after crisis…” Tears streamed from her eyes. “It’s too much for me, Percy. I can’t bear it.” She clutched at him. “Make it stop, please, I
beg you!”
“Hush, darling.” He let go of her wrists. “It will be all right. You just need to sleep.”
“Sleep?” Her eyes lost focus again, looking beyond him, yet a peculiar calm came over her. “Yes, I see it now,” she said dreamily. “Sleep will come soon. You’re going to help me sleep, aren’t you, Percy? Make the future go away?”
He knew what she meant. What she had foreseen. His throat tightened as he realized what he needed to do. He removed the syringe from his pocket.
“Of course, dearest. You will rest soon. I promise.”
“What did I miss?”
Batgirl rendezvoused with them in a secure location not far from the Clock Tower. Batman had taken Joanna there for safekeeping. Batgirl’s crime-fighting uniform hid her true identity behind a durable dark purple suit, cape, and cowl similar in design to his. The gold lining of the cloak, gloves, boots, and other accessories gave her a distinctive look, while long red hair escaped the back of her cowl.
The bunker was one of several satellite bases Batman had installed throughout the city under the cover of various urban-renewal projects funded by the Wayne Foundation. This particular one was located beneath the basement of a storefront in the East End. It lacked the full resources of the Batcave or even the Clock Tower, but was sufficiently stocked with computers, first-aid supplies, a small armory, and other gear that might be needed in a pinch. He took the opportunity to replace his cracked cowl and refill his belt.
“Tell my associate what you learned from Vincent Wright while you were held captive,” he said to Joanna.
“Batgirl?” Joanna gaped at the other woman.
“That’s what they call me.” She came forward to shake Joanna’s hand, then paused to examine Joanna’s bandaged nose. “Ouch. Looks like you’ve had a rough go of it.”
Batman had tended to Joanna’s injuries after they departed the rooftop of the plasma center. As it had turned out, her nose wasn’t actually broken, but needed some patching up. They would have to replace her glasses at some point, as well.
“Could be worse.” She looked over at Batman. “You probably don’t remember, but this is the second time you’ve saved me.”
“I remember,” he said gravely. “Now please go over the details again, and don’t omit anything.”
“Right.” She sat down on a couch and took a deep breath before briefing Batgirl on her experience as the Court’s prisoner. The masked heroes listened attentively until she was finished. “And here I am, bruised and battered, but not reduced to ashes.”
“A second Talon,” Batgirl said, “and an elixir that incites precognition… That’s a new one.”
“As improbable as it may seem,” Batman replied, “it’s not beyond the realm of possibility. Clearly the Court believes in this elixir, so for the moment we do, as well.” He let that sink in for a moment. “As for the new Talon, it sounds as though he may be an old one, kept in a state of suspended animation since Percy’s time. Perhaps he’s been brought out of hibernation because of his prior experience.”
“Suspended animation?” Joanna stared. “That’s actually a thing?”
“It is,” Batman said. “Which means we now have at least two assassins hunting you.”
“Oh Lord, this just keeps getting better and better.” Joanna buried her face in her hands. “I wish I’d never dug into Lydia’s past. Dennis and Professor Morse would still be alive…”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Batman said. “The Owls are responsible for their crimes, no one else. You just wanted to learn more about your own roots.”
She raised her head. “So you know?”
“That you’re related to Lydia Doyle? Yes.” He leaned forward to take a closer look at her. Up close, the family resemblance was even more apparent. “Was that what motivated your research in the first place?”
“It was,” she said, nodding. “Growing up in Gotham, I began to notice my face all over the city—on monuments and buildings constructed long before I was born. It got to the point that I couldn’t ignore it, so I did some digging, and found out about a long-forgotten model named Lydia Doyle, who turned out to be a great-aunt no one ever mentioned.” Joanna chuckled bitterly. “Seems she was a deep-dark family secret, at least back in the day: the black-sheep relation who ran off to the big city to pursue a life of sin and scandal. The whole thing had been hushed up until I finally pried the truth out of my maternal grandmother.”
Batman could believe that. The Waynes had skeletons in their closets, as well. He wondered if the Owls were aware that Lydia still had living relatives. Perhaps her estrangement from her family caused them to fly under the Court’s radar.
“Had Lydia changed her surname, as well?”
“Yes, to avoid embarrassing her more uptight relatives,” Joanna said. “Her birth name was Lydia Gresham. No idea where she plucked ‘Doyle’ from.”
“So why didn’t your roommate know that you were related to Lydia?” Batgirl asked.
“Because I never told her that part.” Joanna shrugged. “What can I say? I was saving it for my thesis.”
Secrets within secrets, Batman thought. “So this all began when you discovered the truth of your connection to Lydia.”
“More or less,” Joanna said, “but that wasn’t all I found out. After Lydia disappeared, and Billy Draper confessed to her murder, the police boxed her personal effects and shipped them off to her next of kin—they were still tucked away in my grandmother’s attic, where nobody had looked at them for nearly a century.” A sad smile lifted her lips. “I can’t tell you how excited I was when I found the box buried under miscellaneous old junk and cobwebs.”
Batgirl’s eyes lit up. “What was in the box?”
“Mostly souvenirs and memorabilia. Old playbills, a scrapbook of news clippings regarding Percy, a map of the 1918 Gotham Exposition fairgrounds, an old parasol, some mildly risqué postcards she posed for back in the day, and a battered old teddy bear that was literally coming apart at the seams. That’s where I found the letters.”
“Letters?” Batman asked.
“Love letters from Percy to Lydia, hidden away inside the teddy bear all this time. Honestly, the only reason I found them was because the bear’s arms and legs were coming off, so I caught a glimpse of them, all tied up neatly with a silk ribbon.” Joanna sighed. “Guess she couldn’t bear to part with them.”
“Was there anything of use in the letters?” Batgirl asked.
“Confirmation that Percy and Lydia were having a clandestine affair,” Joanna answered, “and what seems to be a growing sense of paranoia on Percy’s part. He gets quite insistent that Lydia take every precaution to hide the letters.”
“She obviously listened to him,” Batman said, “since the letters weren’t found or destroyed by the Owls in the aftermath of her disappearance. The Talon of the day must have overlooked the bear, treating it as nothing but a harmless toy. That’s the only way it could have ended up in the hands of your family instead. He left it behind with Lydia’s other personal effects.”
“Big mistake,” Batgirl said. “What became of the letters?”
“I have no idea,” Joanna said. “As far as I know, they’re still tucked away back at my apartment. I haven’t had the nerve to go back for them since I first caught sight of the Talon.” She described the lucky break that allowed her to escape the first time.
“I doubt they’re still there,” Batman said. “Chances are, the Talon took everything of value from your apartment, the same way he removed any trace of your work from Professor Morse’s office and from the cabin by the lake… except for the flash drive you hid in the woodpile.”
“You found that?” she asked.
He nodded. “We’ve been trying to reconstruct your work, and can use your help.” The puzzle was all but complete. Their mission was both clear and urgent. The Owls had done enough damage in the past and present—he’d be damned if they’d take control of the future, as well.
“Of course
,” Joanna said. “Count me in.”
“We have to assume that Vincent is correct, and that Percy hid a formula for the perfected elixir. Even without your assistance, Vincent’s going to keep looking for it, and we have to get out in front of him. Our job now is to follow Percy’s clues and find the formula before the Owls do.”
“What about the cataclysmic ‘inferno’ Percy claimed was coming?” Batgirl asked.
“It’s a missing piece of the puzzle, and one we can’t allow to distract us,” Batman said. “For now we focus on the tangibles. Once we know what we’re facing, we find a way to stop it.”
“But is that even possible?” Joanna asked. “So many of the predictions have already come true. If the future is there to be seen, how can we affect it?”
“I refuse to accept that the future is set in stone,” he replied grimly. “Percy’s elixir may offer glimpses of a possible future, maybe even the most probable future, but as far as I’m concerned, we hold our fates in our own hands.
“The Owls must agree,” he continued. “If the future can’t be changed, then why go to such lengths to obtain the elixir? There’s no telling how much power they could wield, how much damage they might cause, armed with knowledge like that.
“We have to get there first.”
Harbor House, Gotham City, 1918
“So, the girl is gone?”
“Sadly, yes, Grandmaster.”
The meeting at Harbor House was a private one. Only Percy, Margaret, the Grandmaster, and the Talon were in attendance. As before, Percy and Margaret had abstained from donning their ceremonial masks, so that only the Grandmaster and the assassin concealed their faces. Candlelight illuminated the secret room in the musty turret, lit by windows set high in the wall.
“The incendiary effect was significantly delayed in this subject’s case,” Percy reported, masking his grief behind a façade of scientific abstraction, “but, alas, the ultimate result was the same.”
