Suicide Squad Read Free

She steadied herself until the chill faded and she could take a few steps without her legs buckling. Moving closer, she studied the skulls, frightening yet riveting.
    Wickedly beautiful.
    The haze dissipated, and she saw an immense altar carved from the cave walls. It was bear-shaped; a large urn was held in each paw. One was shaped like a man. The other a woman.
    She was drawn to the female urn and compelled to pick it up. Then for some reason she didn’t quite understand, she broke its wax seal and removed its lid.
    That released the black.
    Shadowy wisps flowed from the jar and spread through the chamber. Her helmet light showed trails of black fog dissipating behind it like a comet’s burning trail, as its—head?—drifted toward the back of the cave. Then, in the pitch, she saw eyes.
    Frightening eyes.
    Animalistic eyes.
    Glowing. Staring at June.
    The eyes belonged to a person, barely visible until she aimed her helmet light. It was a frail woman, only partially of flesh and bone. June looked closer and saw that she was also made of smoke, and fog, and mist.
    June knew who she was.
    Enchantress.
    She heard the woman speak, but she wasn’t certain if the voice was spoken aloud, or echoing somewhere in her mind.
    “We’ve both been waiting our entire lives for this, haven’t we, June?” Enchantress asked. “Do you remember me?”
    “Yes,” June replied aloud. “From my dreams.”
    The black fog that was Enchantress drifted toward her, then reached out and held June’s face in amorphous, cold hands.
    “I am more than a dream, June. I am your destiny—and you are mine.”
    June pulled free and tried to run, making it to a tunnel, but the shadowy wisps followed and grabbed her legs, pulling them out from under her, forcing her to fall hard to the ground.
    She struggled, kicking the cloudy wisps, but her feet slammed through them, like the intangible trails of smoke they were. She cried out as she fought.
    “Let go of me.” But they wouldn’t. They pulled her back over the stone path. She turned, twisted, and tried to escape again, but they refused to let go.
    “Stop fighting us, June.” Still Enchantress’s voice was coming from the smoke. “This has been your destiny since before you were born.”
    Then they were back in the chamber, and Enchantress was waiting for her. The wisps dragged June next to the witch, then dissipated back into the dark.
    “It is so exciting,” Enchantress continued, as if she had not been interrupted. “Worlds are going to open up for both of us, and now that I have brought you here, you must let me in.”
    June didn’t respond, nor did she try to resist as Enchantress’s face nearly touched her own.
    “I must be whole again,” the shadowy figure said as the smoky tendrils entered her prisoner’s nose and mouth.
    June Moone inhaled, and the two were one.

FOUR
    It was expected to be a peaceful night.
    There hadn’t been any riots for more than a week. No newbie had been ushered into the exercise yard to wait for his hazing to begin. No crazy somehow conjured a shiv that he knew belonged in the gut of yet another of the certifiably insane. Even the unseasonably mild weather was cooperating. So, atypical as it was, this was turning out to be a very good night indeed.
    Until explosions tore up the exercise yard. Guards positioned in Arkham Asylum’s observation towers vainly searched for the source, but all they could see were patients, drugged out of their minds, numbly wandering the unexpected war zone—uncertain if the explosions were actually happening or were just some new and ridiculous hallucination, an all-too-familiar by-product of their high dosage meds.
    They learned the truth the hard way.
    Paramilitary thugs in gas masks and protective armor descended on ropes dropped from helicopters hovering unseen in the shadowy clouds. Even as they descended, they targeted the helpless guards, effortlessly turning them into instant corpses.
    The few defenders who