Chapter 16

The changing of one year to the next is usually a very exuberant and joyous occasion in any city. The atmosphere is full of ebullience and good will, champagne and wine flow freely, and people try to put their worries, fears and difficulties behind them as the old year dies and the new one is born.

But on the last night of 2003, as the city moved towards the New Year, the mood in Gotham City was far from celebratory. Normally, there were many public ceremonies, including a ball falling from a tower at midnight as crowds of hundreds celebrated and thousands more watched on TV.

This year, however, because of the strings of killing and mysterious disappearances that had taken place over the past four months, a curfew had been put in place and citizens had been advised to limit celebrations. Not that any of this was necessary. Fewer and fewer citizens frequented the streets after dark these days. The illusions that many Gothamites had clung to--- that their city was essentially normal and safe—had been fading more and more as the days grew shorter.

Batman had little contact with the people of that he protected. Nevertheless, he knew that his city was becoming less and less his. In a manner of speaking, things had been getting more under control in the two months that Faith and Spike had confronted him with the true evil that stalked Gotham. Ever since the Slayer had arrived and he and his people had begun to effort of destroying the vampire population in the city, Commissioner Gordon had reported that there had been a noticeable decrease in the number of vampire-type murders. Indeed, Jim said that there hadn't been a report of any such killing in nearly three weeks --- which would have encouraged Batman more if he hadn't known that a lot of those killings were doubtless going unreported.

Indeed, it was the lack of activity on several fronts which had Batman far more concerned. The number of gangland assassinations and incidents had trickled off to nearly zero in the past two weeks. Furthermore, Oracle reported that there had been minimal chatter among gangs about activities such as this. Batman, however, was far from naïve enough that the problems were resolved but without public scenes, there was little that he could do.

As for the escape at Arkham more than a month ago, all but one of the escapees had been recaptured and imprisoned in institutions outside Gotham. One of those involved, Maxie Zeus had hired a mouthpiece and managed to negotiate a temporary release. This was annoying, but not extremely problematic.

The real predicament was that the Joker seemed to have completely disappeared. Batman suspected that the Joker had been hiding underground but searching his normal hideouts revealed nothing. Even more alarming was the fact that six known associates of the Joker had been found dead in the past ten days. The clincher had occurred yesterday when Harley Quinn had been found unconscious outside Gotham Memorial. Batman and Gordon had both tried to see her but the doctors said that she was comatose and had sustained several major internal injuries. They put her chances at recovering as extremely low.

Batman knew that while the Joker valued no one's life but his own, Quinn's devotion to the man who had driven her mad was total and that she would have given her life to protect him. The fact that someone had apparently made this a reality convinced Batman that something terrible had happened to the Joker. This bothered him more than everything else. The Joker was without question the most vicious and violent criminal that Batman had ever had to face. If someone had managed to destroy him, what would that say about his chances of stopping the vampires who seemed to be pulling the strings?

This was particularly frustrating because they had made so little progress in getting anymore information about Nick Prince, or whoever this king vampire really was. So far all of his work, aided by Oracle, had netted nothing. There was no trace of evidence as to where the king vamp was hiding. The few vampires who Batman had managed to capture alive either didn't know or refused to give any hint of where he was. It seemed that their only hope was through the work of Spike.

Batman didn't trust the vampire much further than he could throw him, and he was even less thrilled by what Spike wanted to do to Nightwing in order to ensure that he would move higher up the chain of command. Dick, perhaps sensing the trouble ahead, had agreed to go along with it and they had moved forward. However, that had been three days ago, and he hadn't heard one word from either of them. Which either meant Spike had succeeded at his game but couldn't contact them or that he and Dick were dead. Bruce was leaning more towards the former than the latter, but he didn't know whether instinct or foolish optimism was guiding him.

He had known that patrolling the city tonight was practically a fait accompli. Both Tim and Faith had been doing sweeps of the city every night and had reported zero activity, dead or alive, over the past three days. Nevertheless, as 2003 drew to a close, Batman had become more and more certain that something big was going to happen very soon. What this evil would like he had no idea but he knew that some rough beast was on its way and it was about to arrive. He had been certain that it would come from Crime Alley but his latest sweep netted nothing.

Nothing at all.

Paradoxically this convinced him even more that something was going to happen. Crime Alley hadn't just been quiet; it had been all but deserted. In all his years watching Gotham Batman knew that neither rain nor snow nor dark of night prevented the criminals of Gotham City from preying on the helpless. Not only were there no predators; there had been (with the exception of a few bag ladies) no prey. One almost expected a lone tumbleweed to come blowing down the street through the freezing night air. The emptiness did nothing to divert his feeling of impending doom.

Impending doom? Was that what it was? Batman didn't recognize the feeling. He had felt dismay before, even despair, but doom? That would imply that he was afraid. And he had always worked to deny fear of any kind in him. Now, even in the deepest darkness, he would not concede---

"Ahhh!" The shout snapped him back to full attention. He looked around but instinctively he knew where the voice had come from--- a dirty man in very dirty clothes in the street behind him was the only person he had seen today.

Less than five seconds later he was there – and stopped, slightly puzzled. The dirty man was in the alley, alone. No sign of any purse snatcher or vandal anywhere. Looking closely Batman saw that the man's skin was yellowish, and the veins in his head and neck were clearly becoming varicose. Even from a distance it was clear that this man did not have much longer to live and probably wouldn't notice when he finally stopped.

This was a sad case of humanity but it was somewhat beyond his level of responsibility. In any case, he certainly had more important things to deal with tonight.

He turned away--- and that's when the night started becoming a nightmare.

"Wain!" the man shouted. "Wain!"

Batman turned slowly back to the old wino. Had he--- No, it was probably just the cry of a madman.

"WAINNN!" The wino shouted and pointed at him to leave no doubt.

Despite himself Batman looked around. No one else was in the area. Nobody else who the drunk could be talking about. No one else who could hear the drunks rant.

Quickly, he closed the distance between them. "Are you all right?" Batman said, not wanting to ask the question but having no better idea how to approach this.

For a few moments there was only silence. Upon a closer look Batman saw that the wino was pretty old--- in his early sixties, though of course a steady diet of booze could add a decade to your physical age.

Besides his appearance there was nothing obviously strange about him.

He was about to dismiss the old man's gibberish as, well, gibberish when suddenly the man turned his head towards him.

Suddenly his expression changed from apparent vacancy to some kind of recognition. "You…" the wino gasped out. "You who the night whispers to…"

"Yes." Batman ventured cautiously.

"The night speaks to him, too… Only, to him, it screams."

Batman's normal reaction would be to dismiss the old man's ravings as those of the deluded. There was something besides vague recognition in the old man's eyes, though… Something that Batman didn't like at all.

"The clock strikes one and the cosmic egg falls. Itsy bitsy spider climbs up from the sewers."

Batman was used to receiving cryptic messages from unlikely sources. But he wasn't sure where to begin to decode this. Knowing that it would probably be a futile effort Batman tried to reason with him. "I'm sorry, sir. I'm not sure what you're trying to say---"

Suddenly the wino's hand was on his wrist. For an old man, he had a strong grip. "You ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?"

Batman had become a master being able to mask his reaction to pretty much anything anyone could say to him, but when he heard these words, sounding eerily like they had come straight from the Joker's mouth, he almost flinched. "What the hell is going on here?" he said angrily.

"Not quite there yet. Will be soon enough." The wino no longer sounded like the Joker. Now he seemed afraid. "Lucifer is falling yet again and when he lands this time, the Heavens will bleed."

"Speak English!" Batman now sounded genuinely angry, perhaps mainly to cover the fact that he was becoming more and more confused.

"The man with the painted face is being hung in another gallery. When he is properly viewed, the darkness will rise and it may never go away." He was now whispering harshly. "When the evil emerges, Bruce, you must accept help, no matter who it comes from. Otherwise we are all doomed."

Batman absorbed all this but part of him had frozen after he had heard one particularly word. "How do you know my name?"

"Unmask! Unmask! Unmask!" Whatever strength the wino had acquired was rapidly disappearing; his hand was now hanging limp on Bruce's arm. "And the Red Death held sway over all."

Suddenly his hand dropped away from Batman's wrist. The Caped Crusader almost didn't feel it. "What are you talking about? How do you know who I am?"

There was no response from the old wino, this time. And why should there have been? Batman was close enough to the old man to realize that the smell coming off him was one of decay. Whoever this was… he had been dead for some time… at least a few hours.

Batman slowly backed away from the --- corpse--- his mind reeling. He had dealt with supernatural being before, had been warned off by more than one unearthly force, but this unsettled him mainly because it was so cryptic. For that matter, he wasn't sure which side had opted to use the dead in order to send him a message. What the hell had just---

Suddenly the radio he was wearing clicked on. "Batman, Batman… are you there?"

It was Oracle. Instantly, he was back in the real world. "What is it, Barbara?" he said levelly

"I just got a message from my father. He said that needs you to come to Saint Simeon's right now."

Saint Simeon's held a midnight mass on New Year's Eve. If someone was at the church… "What happened?"

And speaking in a concerned voice that was almost nothing like her normal tone Barbara said, "Just… get there… now..." Her tone held no emotion to it.

"I'm on my way." Batman signed off. For a moment he lingered over his premonition, making sure that he had every word the wino had said engraved in his memory. He didn't know if what had just happened had something to do with whatever was happening at the church, but he had a gut feeling that it did.

He walked back to the Batmobile. As he did, he looked at the sky and saw what might be construed as another premonition. The moon was full tonight, but the clouds that had appeared in front of it seemed to be positioned to resemble a skull.

A death's head, in a manner of speaking.

Bruce knew that darkness had always been around Gotham City. This was the first time in a while that he had remembered that the darkness was much deeper and wider spread then he had admitted to himself. Would it overwhelm the city?

He didn't have an answer.

Gothamites did not regard religion with any greater intensity than other cities with a high crime rate. The amount of murder and destruction that had been taking place in the city even before the invasion of the undead had made for a rather high population of agnostics. But even if you weren't particularly religious – like Harvey Bullock --- sometimes the symbols meant a lot more than that. It was one of the reasons that he, like most of the people of Gotham, considered Saint Simeon's Cathedral something right and proper.

Saint Simeon's was the largest church in Gotham, standing well over two hundred feet high. Built nearly three hundred years ago it was also one of the oldest structures in the city. What made the cathedral unique even among other religious structures was that it was carved out of white sheet that for some reason had only yellowed slightly with the passage of time. It wasn't just a symbol of religion; it was a symbol of purity in a city that didn't have a great number of sacred and profane things.

That was probably why what had happened on the roof of the cathedral hurt Bullock—and no doubt thousands of other citizens of Gotham--- in such a painful and agonizing way. It was probably why so many of the cops that Commissioner Gordon had ordered to cordon off the crime scene were quieter and more somber than usual.

Crime scene. That was a weird way to think about what was now on the roof of Saint Simeon's. The last time something like this had been considered a crime, the calendar read B.C. rather than A.D. Even then, though, it had been considered a sin more than a crime.

For the tenth time in an hour, Bullock wished that Gordon had let them take the body down rather than leave the scene as they had found it for Batman to see. He was sure that they weren't going to find any evidence of who had done this, and he was also pretty certain that every newspaper and TV station in Gotham had already gotten pictures of the scene. Eventually, some pinhead camera man from the AP or one of the major networks was going to show up and then the shit would really start to roll downhill.

The shit has been rolling downhill for quite some time, Harvey m'boy. This is just going to tell the world what everyone else in Gotham already knows…

True. This was a national story. Right up there with Kennedy being shot for the number of ramifications that it might have.

"I was wondering when you'd get here."

Bullock turned around even though he knew that there was no way that Gordon was talking about him. For what had to have been the umpteenth time in his career he wondered how the Batman managed to arrive with no one noticing him. There were at least twenty cops around Saint Simeon's, at least two hundred people crowding the barriers and police tape, and almost all of the press in Gotham was present. Yet somehow the original Man in Black had managed to arrive on scene with nary a soul finding him.

"This is a pretty big party, Jim. I needed to take extra precautions."

"You have a problem with crowds? Color me surprised."

Batman was no longer listening to Gordon. Of course there happened to be an excellent reason that the Caped Crusader's attention was diverted. It was just on top of the horizon.

On the spire of Saint Simeon, a giant mahogany cross had been planted —Bullock figured it was at least ten feet high and six feet long. And, nailed upside down to that cross, was the Clown Prince of Gotham.

"H--- How long has he been up there?" The stammer in Batman's voice was barely notable, but it was there. For once it seemed Batman's remarkable – and in Bullock's mind, often infuriating--- reserve was genuinely frayed. In many ways this was more disturbing then the Joker being nailed to the church as if he were the sail on a ship.

"He wasn't here when the Monsignor opened the doors at 11:30. " Gordon sounded as professional as he could manage, given the circumstances. "When they finished half an hour ago, he opened the door. A member of the congregation felt a drop of blood fall on his shoulder, he looked up, and, well…" Gordon trailed off.

"So you're telling me that between 11:45, when St Simeon's had closed its doors and 12:45, when the doors had been flung open, someone—or a team of someone's--- managed to lift that huge cross to the roof of the cathedral, nailed it there and then disappeared into the night, all the while unheard by the parishioners outside?"

Gordon shook his head. "As far as we've ascertained."

"And this doesn't strike you as a little odd?"

The Commissioner looked more than a little pissed when he heard that. "No, Batman, I considered it par for the course all the lunacy and madness that the city has been hip deep in for the past three months."

"I didn't mean to sound facetious, Jim. I meant that during the hour this was going on, nobody on the street even noticed that they were hanging the Joker up as if he were some kind of plastic Santa Claus? How do you think they managed that particular trick?"

Suddenly Detective Bullock had had enough. "That's a real good question, Bats," he said as he began to walk over from the police tape where he'd been watching the crowd. "Why don't you hit us with a theory? Throw a bone to those of us who haven't been getting scraps for the past three months?"

"Harvey…" The Commissioner's voice was harsh.

"I'm sorry, Commish, but it's the truth. Every time a body shows up a few pints low with holes in the neck, we're told not to worry about catching the perp, that it's being handled." He gestured toward the Batman. "How the hell has he been handling it?"

"It's complicated, Harvey." He recognized Gordon's 'you're crossing the line-tone', but suddenly, he didn't care. He was going to be eligible for a pension in six months, and being a cop was meaning less and less to him these days.

"Complicated? Like the way these gangland hits are complicated? The way these new criminals are complicated? The ones who must be wearing Kevlar underwear 'cause bullets just seem to irritate them?"

"He's right, Jim."

Harvey didn't recognize the tone in Batman's voice because he'd almost never heard it before: humility. That brought him back to earth in the way his boss's tone hadn't. First he's unnerved about someone doing a Willem Defoe on the Joker, now he's doubting his decisions? Things in Gotham were pretty bad if the Bat was starting to wear around the edges.

"I've been so used to handling things in this city that I haven't been able to recognize I needed help." Batman looked at Bullock. "And it never occurred to me to ask for help from the people who are qualified to give it."

Batman had just admitted he wasn't infallible. Bullock would have said that Hell must have frozen over, except he was no longer that wasn't exactly what was happening in Gotham.

"Detective Bullock, what do you think is going on here?"

Talk about days for the calendar; Batman had just asked his advice. Stow it, Harvey .Now is not the time to be glib and sarcastic; especially when you're about to say what you're gonna say.

Bullock swallowed, and then said the thing he had only told himself before he went to bed. "I think there are vampires loose in Gotham. I think that they're waging some kind of war with us and the hoods in this town; and I think we're losing it. And I think that this…" he said, gesturing towards the cross, "…is their sign to all of us that they're now calling the shots."

Now that he had just mentioned the elephant in the room, Bullock was surprised to find that his knees were on the verge of buckling. "Please tell me that I'm crazy."

Batman and the Commissioner looked at each other. "You're absolutely right," Batman finally said.

Bullock now felt even more swimmy. "Funny," he said. "It's not as satisfying having all the answers as you'd think."

"Commissioner!" The yell came from the roof. Now that Batman was here, Gordon finally figured it make sense to have a couple of uniforms take the Joker's body down.

"What is it?" said Gordon almost irritated by the distraction.

"He's got a pulse!"

"That's not possible!" Gordon said in a tone that clearly indicated no, pigs don't fly

"It's barely there, but I'm pretty sure he's alive. Should we get the paramedics up here?"

For a split second Bullock wondered why he was asking such a stupid question; if someone was dying but still clinging to life, it was SOP for anyone no matter who they were. Then Bullock remembered some of the things that the Joker had done to the Commissioner over the years, and he realized that even a lifetime cop like Gordon may have passed his threshold for dealing with this particular villain.

Batman looked at Gordon and saw the same struggle in the man's eyes between duty and justice. Perhaps realizing what had to be going on in the Commissioner's head, he began heading towards the roof.

"Don't," Gordon finally managed to say.

"Jim, you know he might---"

"I don't give a rat's ass what he might, does or will know," Gordon said between his teeth. "Whoever's behind this clearly wanted the bastard dead, and I see no reason at all not to let nature finish the job."

Batman appeared stunned to hear these words. "Jim, you don't mean that."

"Yes, I do." Gordon put his hand on the Batman's shoulder. "You saw those injuries. Even if we get him to a hospital, what happens next? We have the doctors at Mercy spend their time and money on nursing this bastard back to health, so that pale-faced son of a bitch can just break free and kill another dozen people? How many more people have to die for the sake of you and I taking the moral high ground?"

On a gut level, Bullock agreed with every word the Commissioner said. He wouldn't lose sleep if the Joker took a dirt-nap. But to hear his boss, the man who represented the professional face of law and order in Gotham City, voice these thoughts publicly, appalled him. No cop could speak like this and keep his job.

"Jim…" Batman's voice now had a gentle tone that Bullock didn't think the man in black was capable of. "…you can't think like this. You took an oath. "

"The bastard killed Sarah!" Gordon was practically screaming now. "He put my daughter in a wheelchair for the rest of her life! The city is falling down around me, hell, the dead walk the streets as we speak, and now you want me to save that smiling freak!? For what?! Goddamnit, for what!?"

Batman wished he had a good answer. One that Jim could accept, if not embrace, and that would make himself feel easier about what he was to do next. A part of him desperately wanted to just let it end. To stop the whole goddamn dance, let the Joker meet whatever maker there was and focus on the greater evils --- ones which he now knew were ready to riot. But part of him --- and oh, how much he hated that part of him tonight--- told him that he could not go back on his oath. That he could not, especially in this new world, start down the path that led to darkness. If he did, he truly would be no better the creatures he fought.

So he did what he had to. He turned to Gordon, said, "I'm sorry, Jim, but this is what I have to do." and punched Gordon in the face. As Gordon fell, Batman ran to the nave, pulled out one of his grappling hook guns, fired and pulled himself up to the steeple.

Harvey Bullock wasn't just stunned by what had just happened; he was flabbergasted. For the first time, he began to feel real fear at what was going on in Gotham. If things were bad enough so that the Commissioner was a step away from losing it, the Bat was doubting himself and hitting the Commish so he could move around a crime scene, then the world that he knew was gone.

Bullock got to his boss and found to his horror that he couldn't think of the right thing to say. "Are you all right?" had an obvious answer, and he wasn't sure what would happen if he asked, "What do you want me to do?" or "What do you need?" There were no safe answers; there was no right question.

"I'm all right, Harvey," Gordon said as he got to his feet. "He didn't hit me as hard as he could." As he rose, Bullock was appalled to see a kind of blankness in his expression that he had only seen before in battered wives and junkies.

It was the look that said part of them had given up.

Batman didn't want to think of what he had just done to his oldest ally in the city. He didn't want to think of what the ramifications when word got out that Batman had struck the Commissioner. He would have to deal with them eventually, but now it was clear that the darkness around Gotham was swallowing the city whole and he had to do something to stop it—even if that something was resuscitating his greatest foe.

But fate was not without a sense of irony. The Joker was still alive, in the sense that he was breathing and had a pulse. But the wounds on the Jokers body were extensive. He wouldn't be able to tell without an X-ray, but it seemed like many of his internal organs had been punctured. He had also done a neural check and he was pretty sure that the Joker had 'doll's eyes', which meant that the Joker, for all intents and purposes, was a vegetable.

The Joker had clearly been the subject of extensive torture and mutilations and the primitive part of him – the part that grieved the dozens of lives the Joker had snuffed out--- thought 'Good. Dead and done...' But the more rational part was very worried. The Joker was the most formidable adversary that he had ever faced, yet these vampires had reduced him to little more than a sack of bloody meat. If they were capable of that kind of violence---

He looked up at the Joker's face. Something wasn't right with it, and in a moment saw it. There was something white sticking out of the Joker's mouth. Gingerly opening it, he found that it was a crumpled piece of paper, and that it went almost all the way to the back of the throat.

Flattening it out, he saw that there was writing on both sides of it.

On one side, the message was in big print.

For The Batman, from Nicholae. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

He turned the paper over and saw another handwritten message.

Let the removal of this stain from Gotham City serve as a message to all those on the side of the Law that the city is now mine. Those who fight shall die. Those who resist shall serve. Those who are standing shall fall. Leave the city or I will make what I have done to him happen to you… but not nearly as gently.

Almost as if it was on cue, his headpiece crackled.

"Priority alert! Batman, come in!"

"Copy!" Batman said, putting the note in his pocket. Events would occur so rapidly in the next few days that Batman would not realize its significance until three days later… when it was almost too late.

"We've got a major disturbance on the eastern section of Gotham." Oracle sounded worried.

"What kind of disturbance?"

"Okay, disturbance is probably the wrong word."

And even though he thought that he knew the answer to his question, Batman asked it regardless. "What is it then?"

"It's starting to look like a war."