Justice League of America - Batman: The Stone King (25 page)

Manhunter converted his thoughts into a pulse, explanation nested within explanation like a set of carved Russian dolls. He sent the pulse hurtling directly into Green Lantern's mind.

There was no response.

Again, J'onn sent the thought, shrinking it to the tiniest quantum of information he could manage. Was that a flicker? A neuron in Lantern's mind firing briefly?

Desperately, he sent the thought a third time, already beginning to feel the strain. Unless it was with the voluntary cooperation of the recipient, telepathy on this scale could be debilitating to him.

For the briefest of moments, nothing. Then Green Lantern's eyes opened, blinking in the cavern's flickering light.

J'onn's thought package had told him everything, from the possession of Peter Glaston to the present situation in the burial chamber. Shrugging off the memory of the agony that had consumed him for so long, Green Lantern grinned and gave a thumbs-up sign to his relieved rescuers.

Thanks, guys! That creep was really giving me a hard time!

Lantern's eyes narrowed in concentration, and a thin, intense beam of emerald energy lanced from his ring. Silently, it sliced into the granite that was solidified around the Flash and Wonder Woman. In a silent puff of thick green smoke, the rock dissipated.

Free now, the duo lay unmoving next to Superman on the chamber floor. The emerald beam briefly reached out to touch their foreheads, subtly negating the electromagnetic waves that held them in thrall.

Consciousness returned at once.

Peter Glaston wasn't so lucky.

Even as Jenny watched, her vision misted by tears, Peter's voice tailed away and died. The recognition in his eyes faded abruptly, to be replaced by a look that begged for help.

"Peter!" Forgetting her horror, Jenny gave a sob and started forward, but Cassandra's arm tightened around her waist and held her back.

There was nothing they could do as the Stone King regained control. Somewhere deep inside his own mind, Peter Glaston's consciousness began to break apart. Stray thoughts and memories seemed to explode into oblivion as Peter Glaston was finally obliterated.

Forever.

The Stone King regarded the women as if they were laboratory animals. His eyes burned deep into them, seeming to strip away all the layers of civilization until their souls were laid bare before him.

Then he turned away. They no longer mattered. They were insignificant specks, not worth killing.

Waiting to face him was the Justice League.

Don't look into his eyes!

Batman shot the urgent warning into the minds of his comrades, followed closely by:
The women!

Green Lantern received the message and acted a nanosecond later. The beam from his ring formed itself into a gruesome emerald figure, with stumpy, jagged wings on its back. It swooped down and swept up Cassandra and Jenny, one under each arm.

Batman and J'onn J'onzz exchanged a puzzled look, but neither spoke.

Almost instantaneously, Lantern's demonic green figure deposited the two women back where they'd parked Jenny's car, leaving them standing confused and bewildered.

Outside the Stone King's sphere of influence, the pyramid and everything it contained had become invisible to them again. They were alone with the moon and the windswept grass, backed by the rushing waters of the nearby Gotham River.

Sorry about the demonic imagery,
Lantern apologized to no one in particular, as his creation disappeared again.
Didn't have time to think of a more suitable alternative.

The others were standing in a loose semicircle, almost filling the chamber with their presence.

The Stone King faced them, immobile but alert, jagged balls of plasmoid lightning darting around his fingertips. Every now and again his entire body pulsed slightly, as if he was receiving an unseen electric shock.

He's sizing us up,
Superman thought.

The Man of Steel did a little sizing up of his own as he scrutinized the motionless shaman.
My heat vision could take him down. Or I could use my speed and strength to capture him before he's aware of what's happening.

We have already tried,
Martian Manhunter pointed out
He's protected by a force field. We don't know the full extent of his powers, only that he can somehow tap into the energies of the planet itself.

Superman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, and Green Lantern all broadcast the same thought.
How could he possibly siphon off Earth's energies?

Believe it,
Batman informed them.
Since the Stone King captured you four, there have been major incidents at dozens of sites across the globe. A lot of deaths, a lot of damage. I've called up all of the League's reserve members to handle the crisis, but unless we configure out how to defeat the Stone King, it'll all be to no avail. As far as J'onn and I can tell,
he finished grimly,
his aim is to destroy the world in precisely
–Batman depressed a stud on the wrist of his gauntlet, and the HUD display inside his cowl lit up briefly–
Twenty-three minutes. Midnight, local time.

And that's what he's waiting for?
The Flash was outraged.
More to the point, what are
we
waiting for? I could create an instant vacuum at super speed, deny him all oxygen–

Your idea might work,
Batman admitted. So
might Superman's. Our problem is: what happens if they don't?

He waited, but no one answered him.

The Stone King is obviously preparing himself now,
J'onn J'onzz thought.
Even though the pieces of this puzzle have yet to fall together, we must act before it is too late.

Galvanized by Manhunter's solemn finality, Batman turned to Green Lantern. Is
there anything more your ring can tell us?

The Emerald Warrior shook his head. No.
I tried, but I just can't make sense of it at all.

Batman frowned. He hadn't seen Green Lantern use the power ring. But, keeping the rest of his thoughts to himself, Batman came to a sudden decision.
Flash, try to penetrate his force field. If you can negate it, we'll attack en masse.

Instantly, the Flash's body began to vibrate, disappearing from the others' vision. Every molecule acted in unison as the Scarlet Speedster swiftly ranged through the spectrum, from subsonic to ultrahigh frequency, seeking the exact wavelength of the Stone King's protection.

Suddenly he saw it–a shifting, sinuous pattern of energy that danced around the shaman.

Got it!
he announced triumphantly.
It's in the electromagnetic band. I'm going in!

The Flash fine-tuned the speed of his vibration, until it perfectly matched the force field's energy configuration. He stretched out a hand, which should have moved through the barrier like water running through a sieve.

Instead, there was an explosion of blinding light that blasted the Flash back into normal mode. He stared in astonishment.

The Stone King remained standing immobile. But now, surrounding him like guardian demons, another five Stone Kings had appeared.

Before any of the super heroes could react, the doppelgangers rushed to the attack.

"C'mon, everybody. It's party night!"

The man in the Dracula mask and blood-red cloak capered among the crowd on Finger Avenue, urging them to join in his alcohol-fueled dance.

The mood of the partygoers in downtown Gotham was relatively subdued. Pumpkin lanterns adorned every streetlight, but the flotilla of colorful floats that drove slowly through the city center in the famous Night Parade was only half the size of previous years. On the floats, people dressed in a dazzling array of Halloween costumes sang and cavorted. Despite the grim events of recent days, thousands of spectators had turned out to line the route.

Several street bands filled the night with music, and the smell of a hundred different fast foods mingled in the air.

"Look, Mommy!" A laughing child in a wizard's costume pointed up between the walls of the concrete canyons. "The Man in the Moon has come to our party!"

His mother gazed up at the almost-full moon that hung over the city, its pale light given a faint orange tinge by the pollutants in the air. A huge face had appeared on its surface–
a
gigantic head of a man-bull, complete with horns.

The mother smiled.
"It
must be an advertising stunt, dear."

A ragged cheer went up as more people noticed the impressive face. A group of students masquerading as zombies performed an impromptu dance in the middle of Main Street. Children out to trick-or-treat clapped their hands in delight.

Several concession holders, camped out in their booths along the procession route, made a mental note to complain to City Hall about their lack of advance information. What a great mask that face would have made!

In his office high in Police Headquarters, Jim Gordon stood at his window, looking down on the city below. His men were out in force tonight, but so far, so good. There had been virtually no arrests.

The disasters throughout the world had dampened everyone's spirits. Gordon found himself comparing the partygoers to ostriches burying their heads in the sand rather than facing up to danger. But maybe that was unfair. When people were afraid, they needed something out of the ordinary to help them forget their worries.

Gordon's mind, however, kept straying to Cassandra's vision. She said the city would be destroyed at midnight on Halloween, and Batman seemed to have taken her very seriously indeed. Gordon hadn't heard from Batman since, but that wasn't unusual. They had no regular contact. When one of them needed the other, he was always found.

The commissioner took a last look at the moon, wondering how on earth the sponsors had managed to project a hologram onto the lunar surface, then turned away from the window.

He glanced at his pipe, which lay on his paper-strewn desk beside a pouch of tobacco and a box of matches. The evening had been largely stress-free, and Jim had been able to comply with his decision not to smoke again.

I'll give it till midnight,
he thought. Gordon pulled out the old pocket watch that had belonged to his father, and his father's father, from his waistcoat pocket.
Twenty minutes to go. All quiet so far. Has to be a good omen.

Then the face in the moon spoke.

Every man, woman, and child in the city heard it, yet no microphone would have picked it up, no tape recorder could have translated it to audio. The voice spoke directly inside their heads, coming from a location that seemed to be at the heart of their being, their very center of existence.

And the voice prophesied doom.

"Your foulness will be cleansed, as the foulness of the world is cleansed. The cycle is ending. Make peace with your gods. Tonight, every last one of you will die."

Jim Gordon's stomach lurched. With sinking heart and shaking hand, he reached for his pipe.

Meanwhile, at the pyramid, lightning flashed from the eyes of the five duplicate Stone Kings as they launched themselves at their foes.

The Flash was first to react. In the blink of an eye he accelerated to superspeed from a standing start, spinning around like a top, his arms outstretched and fists balled. The centrifugal force was tremendous as his fists slammed into the Stone Kings with devastating effect, knocking the creatures off their feet. One was sent careening into the chamber wall, sparks flying from its point of impact.

But even as the Flash slowed to a halt, the Stone Kings were recovering, springing to their feet to renew their assault.

Superman dived headlong, his arms taking two of the figures around the waist. The momentum sent all three crashing through the outer wall in an explosion of stone and chalk.

J'onn J'onzz pinned a third Stone King to the hard earth floor, increasing the density of his molecules in an effort to crush the creature into submission.

Wonder Woman's golden lasso snaked out to loop over the fourth Stone King's body and slip down over his arms. Wonder Woman pulled the lasso taut, jerking the beast off its feet again.

Batman took a couple of steps to the side, moving behind the altar stone with its covering of dried blood and rotting animal entrails. The original Stone King still stood in the center of the chamber, the intense pulsations that affected his body coming more frequently now. Batman glanced toward Manhunter and saw the duplicate he was fighting suddenly heave the Martian away as if he were made of feathers.

Green Lantern!
Batman thought urgently.
J'onn's in trouble!

For the briefest moment Green Lantern looked flustered, as if unsure what to do. Then a solid green beam sprang from the power ring, its end shaped like a medieval battering ram. The beam took J'onn's foe in the chest, blasting the creature off its feet and hurling it into the wall with brutal impact.

Time's running out,
Batman informed his teammates.
Only seventeen minutes left!

Most of the Western Hemisphere was in darkness. Almost midnight in Gotham meant almost nine P.M. on the West Coast. In Europe, it was five in the morning, with dawn still more than an hour away. Across the globe, more than a billion people were sleeping.

And every one of them had heard the Stone King's warning. It came to them in their dreams, or they wakened with a start . . . to his physical manifestation.

A Navajo medicine wheel laid out in the New Mexico desert started spinning like a top, spitting out cobalt-blue sparks. The Ohio Serpent Mound began to undulate as if it were a living thing. In California's Death Valley, a thick, sulfurous smoke began to spew forth from the old bauxite mines, suffocating everything it came in contact with.

A British army patrol on night maneuvers reported thirteen giant figures dancing around the sacred stones of Avebury in a slow shuffle. Each one wore a bull's-head mask.