Wayne of Gotham Read Free Page B

Gotham! So sad that some crazed hood gunned ’em down in Crime Alley.” The dummy’s head shifted back and forth. “That’s the way they told it to you—a nice bedtime story so you could sleep at night in your nice warm bed in Bristol.”
    Batman froze.
    Whoever is behind this knows who I am.
    Scarface shook his wooden head violently from side to side. “But you’re a big boy now, aren’t you? You have new toys to play with, so maybe you don’t need fairy tales anymore. Maybe you can wake up and know that all saints pay a price and that their souls ain’t always clean. I’m gonna throw a party, just for you. Do you think you’re old enough to come?”
    The dummy suddenly stopped moving.
    It was only then that Batman noticed the card held in the dummy’s hand. He would take the dummy with him along with any of the audio equipment. It would not do to have those words replayed during any subsequent police investigation.
    But first he reached down with his gloved hand and picked up the offered card. To his eye it was a standard size, blank on the back with a single line of text on the front.
    â€œ You are invited. ”

CHAPTER TWO
COLD CASE
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    Batcave / Wayne Manor / Bristol / 5:51 a.m. / Present Day
    Batman opened the gull-wing door of the Batmobile, gripped the titanium frame, and tried to stand up. His legs shook under him but held as he painfully rose out of the low-slung seat. He had exhausted the capacitors for the Batsuit’s power in Spellbinder’s Fun House, which was on Amusement Mile, on the north shore of the Newtown District. Normally he would have recharged the Batsuit during his return using the vehicle’s onboard power, but it had been too short a trip from Newtown under the Kane Memorial Bridge and into Bristol. So now the Batsuit hung on him as extra weight that his aching body was struggling to support.
    He slowly rose to his feet next to the car, tapping the release points at the base of his cowl in sequence. The smooth collar fitted to his neck loosened and he pulled the cowl off with urgent vehemence. His dark hair exploded outward at odd angles, sweat dripping down off his brow. The mask was off, and he was Bruce again, breathing a little harder than he would like and staring down at the cowl in his hand as though it were a part of him removed. He reached up, rubbing the back of his gloved hand across the prominent stubble on his face. The new Batsuit worked well, but it could be improved.
    Everything needs to be improved. It’s not right. Not yet.
    Bruce looked back at the Batmobile.
    Batmobile … what a joke. It was a name that the Gotham press had given his specialized vehicle when he had first appeared in one. It defied their classifications of standard transportation systems, and so they slapped a name on it that they could handle: the Batmobile. In truth, there had been many different Batmobiles at his disposal down through the years, some specialized and some made obsolete by the passage of time and technology. One of his favorites was a heavily converted 1955 Lincoln Futura. It had been his father’s car originally, and Bruce had managed to salvage it from the junkyard just in time. He had spent years working on the car. He never used it, but he liked the look. Most of the vehicles were more practical, designed for the specific requirements of the time, and nearly all were in a constant state of rebuild and upgrade. Many were easily recognizable as a Batmobile—their bodies sweeping into the ubiquitous sculpted and scalloped fins that somehow always made it into his designs. The models from the 1980s were muscular, built around jet engines or enormous power plants that screamed in the night. He had been younger then and relished the power under his hands. As the Batmobiles evolved, they were becoming subtler if not less muscular, with stealth technologies incorporated into their brute strength.
    The