Chapter 15

He had held the woman prisoner for more than twelve hours—an unusually long period for him. Normally, he held captives for less than eight; unless, of course, they were friends of Batface and his ilk. Then he gave them a lot more of his time and energy.

The Bat didn't know who this woman was and she was seemingly of no real importance to anyone--- no husband worrying, no family to harangue. So, there was really no reason that the Joker shouldn't have killed her a long time ago… except, of course, for the fact that he was bored.

"Frankly," he spoke, aiming his dialogue at the two associates in the room as he moved on to the vise, "I really don't see what ol' man Torquemada saw in all those burning coils and racks. Not only were they retro even in the Seventeenth Century, but they don't even do the same job that a good old fashioned blowtorch can do." He looked at the terrified woman. "Wouldn't you agree Miss?"

There was no reaction from the woman so Joker gave a really hard squeeze of the vise. The woman yelled but even her screams were diminished. He was pretty sure that her vocal cords had given out a few hours ago. "Well?" he asked in a far sterner voice.

"Y—Yes!!" the woman managed to gasp.

"I thought so," he said cheerfully. "Still those inquisitors were stubborn folk. Once they got their minds made up, you couldn't Torquemada anything."

On cue, both of his associates laughed—but they made little effort to make their laughter not sound forced. Under normal circumstances, the Joker would have smashed one or both of their faces in. Unfortunately, it had become far clearer in the month since he had escaped from Arkham that good help was a lot harder to find.

From the minute he had gotten back on the street, Joker had realized that Gotham really had become a new world--- and not a better one. For starters, when he had begun the process of rounding up some of his old gang, he had found that a lot of them had died in the past few months--- or more often, vanished without a trace. He didn't care about this. What bothered him far more was when he accounted associates and found that he wasn't the biggest game in town anymore.

This was made particularly clear when he had a conversation with Fisk, a man who had been loyal to the Joker for three years but who had only begun to work with his old boss with extreme reluctance.

"So what's happening, Fisky?" Joker had asked casually, "You and your associates don't seem that happy."

"That's because there isn't a great deal to laugh about, Mr. J."

This was heresy to the Joker's ears. "You know how I feel people without a sense of humor, Nelson."

When the Joker used first names, especially with flunkies, bad things often happened. Either Fisk had forgotten that rule or things had passed a serious juncture while he was in Arkham, because he continued to speak solemnly. "I know how you feel about that, Boss, but the fact of the matter is killing me might be doing me a huge favor. "

"Why is that?"

"Because right now on the street getting killed isn't the worst thing that can happen to you."

Up until this point the Joker had considered the vampire-like murders stories from an imaginative and disordered mind--- the kind from a person that he would have like to know better. Now he began to consider something that was pretty near unimaginable.

"What the hell has been happening in this town?" He asked in as serious a tone as he had used in a long while.

And Fisk had told him about the last three months. He told him the vampire-like killings were just the tip of the iceberg; that the major crime syndicates had been losing important members under mysterious circumstances and that many of the major low-level thugs had either disappeared or had reappeared—suddenly invulnerable against almost everything. Also, a new breed of criminal was emerging in Gotham City—one that, like the Batman, only came out at night.

"And who is the puppet master behind these events?" Joker had asked.

"No one knows for sure," Fisk answered. "They call him the Prince but no one has ever seen his face."

"No one alive, you mean," the Joker had corrected.

"Maybe," said Fisk reluctantly.

"Hmmm." For a moment the Joker heard a voice in his head whisper Get out now but it was gone in a moment. He asked a more pertinent question instead. "And how has the man in the cape and cowl been handling this?"

"He's taken up fighting the vampires; killing them left and right, or so they say."

"I imagine that he would." Joker had considered all this. Clearly the situation in Gotham City had changed radically over the past few months but he thought that, as had always been the case before, he could adopt, adapt and improve.

"Well," he had said slowly, "it's clear that this is a whole new world. The Bat's no doubt concentrating on more important things." Then the grin was back full force. "I guess I'll just have to show him that an old dog can learn new tricks."

And so the Joker had launched on a new campaign of evil--- one that he thought would piss off both Bat 1 and Bat 2, reestablish himself as a force in this new Gotham and be a great deal of fun in the process.

Assembling whatever henchmen he could find that were still alive and ready to work (a number that he grimly noted was a lot smaller than it had been in the past) he had gotten them to obtain the materials that he needed for his 'vision', as he called it.

While he had been waiting, the Joker made visits to a couple of places he hadn't gone in a while--- a few grocery stores, a couple of low-rent hardware stores, and the St. Linus' Mother of Christ church. While gathering his supplies, he had behaved very low-key, killing only four people and none of them with his usual trademarks. He didn't want to appear on anyone's radar screen until he was ready.

It had taken four days to perfect his design. Then the Joker began to send out his henchman out on the streets with simple instructions: Go out at night. Find a person walking alone, make sure they were not vampires, grab them with a minimum of fuss and bring them back doing as little damage to them as possible.

"Hurting them will be my job," he had said grimly.

The first victim had been a tall, black man. The Joker had asked for his wallet and read out his driver's license, which identified the man as one Ivan Brodsky. He had then asked the frightened man a single question. "Are you now or have you ever been in contact with the Batman?"

"N—no," Brodsky had stammered.

"Excellent!" the Joker had said in his best Mr. Burns voice. He had then ordered his henchman to bind the man's hands and take him to his current lair -- the sewers underneath St. Simeon's, the largest cathedral in Gotham.

He had led him into a medium–sized space closest to the water. In it was his torture chamber--- a combination of recently constructed devices, a design that had occurred to the Joker while in his most recent stay at Arkham.

"Where to begin?" the Joker had said musingly. "I know. Why don't we start with---- the comfy chair?"

Brodsky saw what was coming and started shouting. "No! No!" But his protests went for naught as two of the Joker's henchmen had forced him into an attractive mahogany chair on which nearly a hundred large nails were installed, pointy side up.

Over the next six hours, the Joker had proceeded to use a fairly versatile collection of painful instruments to inflict a truly ghastly amount of pain. Every time Brodsky passed out, the Joker ordered the henchmen to remove him from the chair, clean him and dress his wounds until he regained consciousness. The instant that he did, the Joker had grabbed a bucket of salt water and doused him with it.

"Why are you doing this to me?" Brodsky had screamed at least once an hour.

Each time the Joker gave the same answer. "Didn't you know? This is a random act of violence," He had said innocently. "I hear it's all the rage with these kids today." Then he resumed his attack.

Finally, seven hours later, after he had done about all the damage you can do to a man and still leave him alive, Joker lifted Brodsky's head up and said: "Well, this has been a lot of fun but I think we're finished."

"We… are?" Brodsky had managed to say.

"Uh-huh." The Joker said sweetly. "I just have one last little thing to do." He took out an eighteen-gauge needle. "Don't worry; like the midget dentist said when he took his pants down, you'll only feel a little prick."

He injected Brodsky with the needle. He had changed the formula so he didn't have to wait very long. Brodsky began to snicker… then chuckle. Finally he exploded into laughter, and while his head was up, Joker drove a small two-hole prong he'd designed into the jugular.

The position of the puncture along with the ferocity of the laughter did the rest. Soon blood was streaming out of Brodsky's neck at a truly alarming rate and yet, even as his life's blood poured out of him, the doomed man kept laughing and laughing.

Ten minutes later it was all over and Ivan Brodsky lay dead with a smile still plastered on his face, the end result of an ingestion of Joker venom. For a long moment Joker stood over the body, admiring his handiwork. "I should frame this," he had said to himself.

Then he called in two of his henchmen, both of whom had worked with the Joker long enough to know better than to gawk at the corpse before them. "Take this piece and have it moved to a place where the man-Bats will appreciate it."

"W—where would that be?" One of the drones had asked.

Joker had thought it over. "Take him back to his car," he had finally said. "Park in a 'No-Parking zone' and leave him in the driver seat." He had rubbed his hands together. "That should get their motors running."

The end result, however, had not been as sensational as he had hoped. There was no report of it on the local news, but that was hardly unusual--- the Joker had come to expect that from the Philistines who considered his work unfit for viewing. However, it had only appeared on page 3 below the fold in the Gotham Gazette. The front pages had been devoted to articles on a series of gangland killings. Disappointed but not unsatisfied, he had shrugged and said, "Oh well. As they say in the cooking shows, we'll have to kick it up a notch."

And so he had sent his men out to get another victim, female this time. Joker had gone through the same procedure on the woman, had performed with the same delicacy and succinctness and finished with the same imprint.

This time he told them to place the woman next to the Macy's on Eighth Street. The results, however, were even more unsatisfactory. The article was on page four and it was only three-quarters as long. Even worse, just before sunrise, one of his henchmen disappeared. When the Joker had asked Fisk what had happened to him, the nervous flunky had told him that he had gone out for cigarettes and never came back.

His body was found three days later completely drained of blood.

By that time Joker had far more serious concerns. His murders had not brought the goody-two shoes Batman coming down on his head, which hurt his pride, nor had it attracted the attention of the big bad vampires that invaded Gotham City. He had resolved that he would continue his working, become more and more imaginative with each successive piece.

He had then proceeded to torture and kill three men , two women and one child in an eight day period. It was his most violent and elaborate work in years--- and the Bat hadn't even looked for him. Even more upsetting, only two of his masterpieces had received any attention in the press-- the rest weren't mentioned at all.

The Joker had no way of knowing that the vampire population was more than aware of his artwork and were going to elaborate ends to make sure that it wasn't seen by the wrong people(defacing a defaced corpse was nothing new to most of them). He also had no way of knowing that the Gotham PD had struck an elaborate bargain with the media in Gotham to make sure that as little about vampiric activity made it into the news.

All he knew was that he was doing some of his best work and no one seemed to his appreciate it. Even his minions seemed less than enthralled by his masterworks but Joker knew that they were caught up over petty matters such as the death of two of them and the disappearance of two more.

Now, as he continued his administrations over his latest victim--- a nineteen year old college student named Lucy--- the Joker began to deliver a harangue to one of his remaining henchmen and Harley (who had come back into the Joker's embrace the day after his first murder) watched him work his magic.

"I'm telling you, Harley, I get no respect," he said as he picked up a fiery screwdriver. "I mean, seriously, who does a guy have to kill to get a little exposure in this burg?"

"I don't know, Mr. J," said Harley honestly. "You would think by now people would know beauty when they saw it."

"Damn straight. I mean, for murder and mayhem, I'm up there with the old masters--- Bundy and Manson and Dahmer, oh my!" he said as he pressed the screwdriver into Lucy's knuckles. "But for all the death I'm dealing out you'd think I was a Central American dictator 'cause the people here just don't give a damn."

"Nice political stuff, sir." Harley said approvingly.

Joker nodded. "I'm working on adding a little Dennis Miller into my repertoire."

"It's working for you."

"Now I can understand maybe how the police don't show any interest in my art--- even when I attract their attention they never appreciate my work." The Joker barely heard the college girl's scream as he pulled the screwdriver out; he was so caught up in his rant. "And that Bat, well he only cares about the artist, never the art. But I would have thought that those living impaired individuals that now apparently think they own this town would be able to appreciate some well done violence."

"Um, Mr. J---"

If the Joker hadn't been so enraptured by the violence and the rant he was dishing out--- or, for that matter if he had cared about Harley at all, he would have noticed that he no longer sounded sympathetic but rather afraid. Very afraid. However, like almost arch-villains, he was in love with the sound of his own voice and was therefore completely unaware of what was happening less than fifteen feet away from him.

"So I pour my heart and my liver and a good portion of my intestinal tract into these masterpieces and what thanks do I get? Where is my audience?"

"We are right here." Neither Harley or Fisk had spoken that last sentence. This voice sounded harder and older. Ancient, almost.

The Joker looked up and saw that he was no longer the only one who had dished out violence over the past few minutes. Fisk lay dead at his feet, his neck cleanly broken. Harley was lying in a corner, apparently unconscious and standing over their bodies were two rather large men with a small trace of blood on their hands.

"Well this is new and different," the Joker said coolly, trying not to express the amazement in his voice that two men had beaten the crap out of two of his closest followers without him hearing a thing in the space of just under two minutes. "Let me guess. You're the new kids in town."

"I would hardly think you would call us 'new'." One of the vampires—the Joker figured that was what they had to be—spoke up.

"Well, I must say I'm somewhat disappointed," the Joker said calmly as he reached into his coat. "I must say after all the build-up you got from my boys I was expected you'd be bigger, have better makeup and sound like Bela Lugosi."

Suddenly he pulled out the crucifix that he had been carrying for the past two weeks. It had been blessed by the priest in the Saint Simeon's just before he had shot him. The Joker had gotten his money's worth— the cross was enough to cause the vampires faces to change unto that of a demon and they both noticeably recoiled.

"Well, that's a little better." The Joker said as he walked a few more feet towards them. "Still barely better than Ed Wood, but not bad." A thought occurred to him. "Didn't I have three other guys guarding this room?"

"You did," said one of the vampires. "Our boss took care of them."

"Oh joy and rapture. At last I'm going to meet someone in charge." The Joker looked around. "And where, pray tell, is he?"

"I am right here."

The Joker looked surprised—it was the older voice that had first spoken, but it clearly didn't belong to either of the vampires currently in the room.

Suddenly he saw him. The figure was much taller than the other two—at least six foot five. His face was lined with so many scars he almost made Croc look handsome. His hands were lined and ridged with long fingernails caked with dirt and blood. He wore a dark overcoat that looked like it might have been fashionable a century ago.

This was the real McCoy. The Joker had finally struck gold. So why did it feel like all the spit in his mouth had dried up?

"So you are the one that they call Joker," There was a definite European accent in the vampire's voice but it didn't sound like Bela. There was also a trace of disdain in its voice that Joker didn't really care for—but there was no point arguing with someone who had just slaughtered his men.

"Well, my friends would call me Jack, but I don't have any friends," he said, putting the proper amount of whimsy and mockery in his voice.

"What's your name?"

The large vampire eyeballed the man up and down. "My name is Kotaski, little man," the vampire said after a few seconds. "And we are not going to be friends so don't be cute."

At the back of the Joker's mind a small voice was screaming. It may have been the last shred of sanity that he still had and right now it was telling him to get the hell out of here while he still could, while survival was still an option. But the Joker had spent years ignoring that part of himself and he wasn't going to start listening to it now, especially now that he was on the cusp of his greatest achievement.

So he lowered his voice and asked almost casually, "By the by, how did you manage to get inside my humble abode? I distinctly remember that a vampire needs an invitation to get into a person's home."

Kotaski eyed the Joker like he was examining some small insect before responding. "That is only necessary when the building in question is an actual house, not some chamber in a sewer under a church," The old vampire spat on the ground with signs of disgust. "Though I suppose that an establishment like this is fitting to someone such as yourself."

"Well, I do admit the quarters leave a lot to be desired." Joker admitted. "Truth be told I haven't really been paying much mind to my surroundings; I've been so immersed in my art."

"Art?" Kotaski spat. He began laughing and not the good kind of laughter that the Joker enjoyed hearing, either. No, these guffaws were ones of pity and disdain. "You call this---" Kotaski gestured to the woman in the chair who was bleeding from a hundred places and who had been whimpering in pain all through the conversation, "----art? You urinate on the Spanish Steps and you call it ART!!!"

And in a motion so swift that the Joker barely saw it, Kotaski grabbed one of the nails off the tray and rammed it through the woman's neck. She gagged for a few seconds before dying.

Now the Joker was getting pissed. "I was in the middle of something here and you have no right---"

"Something? This is nothing! It's a stain, a debasement, an abomination. Like all your previous work." Kotaski made a noise that was pretty close to a snarl. "Like you!"

The Joker was getting ready to boil over. "You're making me angry. Trust me; you don't want me to get angry. "

"I care no more for your state of mind then the rest of you." Kotaski was playing him completely straight, which infuriated the Joker even more. "The people of this city, the crime-fighter, the mobsters, they all shivered when your name was mentioned." Now Kotaski was circling around the corpse. "They called you cousin to the Devil and the greatest evil around. Pah!!"

In one swift motion, Kotaski shoved the chair over to the wall--- no easy trick because Joker had nailed it to the floor. "Your name is absolutely perfect, because you are a buffoon, a failed clown, a complete and utter fool!!"

By now the Joker was rapidly realizing the severity of his situation. Unfortunately, he was still grossly underestimating the danger he was in. Part of it was his general insanity, but a lot more of it was his overbearing ego. The voice that said 'I'M the biggest badass in Gotham City and don't you forget it!' and he wasn't going to let this Bram Stoker reject beat him. Not on his turf.

So he extended his grin back to full force and began to slowly walk backward, beginning to reach for the tools he had gone to an enormous amount of trouble to obtain. "Well, I may be a buffoon," the Joker said slowly, "and in several ways I may be a failure is a clown." He assumed a Groucho voice. "Certainly I'm not making you laugh." He then lowered his voice until it was more menacing. "But I am far, far from the fool you think I am. In fact, if there's one thing that I'm good at, it's planning ahead."

And in one swift motion he brought out one of the special 'stakes' that he had designed--- a Louisville Slugger with one end filed to a point. "Batter up!" he shouted and he slammed the bat into Kotaski's chest.

The Joker wasn't entirely sure what he had expected to happen, but seeing Kotaski look down at the 'stake', give a small sigh, and pull it out of his chest was pretty near the bottom of the list. "You think to thwart me with that puny piece of wood?" the scarred vampire asked disdainfully as he tossed it to the ground.

Oh shit, thought the Joker. There was no question as to what he was feeling in his guts right now. Fear. Screaming, gibbering fear. To make matters worse he had now nearly backed up until he was at the wall which meant he was nearly out of room.

Still he did have a couple of tricks left. "Well," he said in as brave a voice as he could manage, "you have caught me with my pants down." Suddenly he put his hand on the flower in his lapel. "Good thing that I always wear clean boxers."

He squeezed the flower and a stream of holy water taken from the church above him hit Kotaski dead in the face. This time there was damage done--- Kotaski fell back with his face giving off hot steam.

You can't beat them. Run. The speedboat that you brought isn't that far away. These vamps aren't nearly as tough as Kotaski; a good poke in the ribs will take them out. Worry about PR later; now just save your ass.

He was about to start running, about to put one foot in front of the other when suddenly he heard a voice in his head. And this time it definitely did not belong to him.

Joker, it said softly but forcefully. Where do you think that you're going?

It was a perfectly valid question because he found himself unable to move. He mentally willed himself to do so but he was completely paralyzed. "W—who are you?" Joker said, hating the stammer in his voice but unable to do anything to stop it.

I think that you know. There was power in this voice. An evil so dark and deep that he could almost believe what Kotaski had said about him. You wanted to meet the Prince. Well, now you have.

The Joker looked around—or tried to, his head was as paralyzed as the rest of his body. "Where are you?"

A derisive laugh came. Nowhere near here, if that is your question. I am miles away.

"Then how are you doing this?"

One of the men who you were thinking of running from was sired by

me. The bond between us is so deep I can see through his eyes, hear through his ears. The voice snickered. My powers are diminished, I admit, but they are still strong enough to bind you to this spot.

He doesn't even need to do that anymore, the Joker thought sourly. By now both of the vampires which had come with Kotaski were on either side of him.

And speaking of Kotaski, the larger, more scarred vampire was standing again, his face looking worse than before, partly because of the steam coming off it, mostly because his scowl had gone from menacing to downright psychotic.

"You pale-faced freak!! You think to thwart me--- a member of the Carpathian guard--- with that pitiful flower and the pathetic cross!!?" He grabbed the cross from the Joker's suddenly nerveless hand and quickly broke it across his knee. When he heard it snap, the Joker knew that he'd being hearing that noise for the rest of his life--- which, admittedly, might not be that much longer.

"I should kill you now and save the world a lot of trouble." Kotaski said shortly. A cruel smile—which did nothing to improve his looks appeared on his face. "But his Excellency has a far more fitting plan."

"W—what are you going to do?" the Joker managed to ask.

"Do you know what Gotterdammerung is?" Kotaski didn't wait for an answer. "It is German for 'twilight of the gods'." He walked a few paces away from the Joker. "The people in Gotham who know what we are think that we have come to destroy the city."

"Then- then what are you going to do?" The Joker managed to get out before one of the vampires slapped him in the face.

"They misunderstand the plan. It is not Gotham we plan to destroy--- only the people who made it what is today. Commissar Gordon, Thorne, Falcone, Two-Face, Batman," Kotaski gestured towards the Joker, "yourself--- will be the ones to go."

The Carpathian walked calmly back towards him. "'You, Joker, will be the first to fall." His predatory grin resurfaced. "And we shall make your demise as public as possible."