And I Kinda Like Mine, Batgirl, PG-13
Name/Lj name: Cricket/Clutzycricket
Story title: And I Kinda Like Mine
Word Count: 11,604
Rating: PG-13
Summary: When Batman’s away, someone has to deal with the haunted house and its zombie army. Batgirl is not impressed, Spoiler thinks that Batgirl needs to watch more horror movies, the demonologist is uncomfortable, and the psychic is fed up.
Warnings: Skirting around the idea of bondage when someone is out of it in two scenes, not for sexual purposes.
WTFBrain's wonderful mix is to be found here- http://inmediasres.dreamwidth.org/7914.html
Dramatis Personae:
Batgirl- Cassandra Cain, the daughter of assassin David Cain. Taught since birth to read body language as her only language, one of the best fighters in the world, though functionally illiterate.
Spoiler- Stephanie Brown, daughter of minor villain the Cluemaster. She became Spoiler originally to stop her father, kept at it because she liked it. Probably Cassandra’s best friend. Known for wearing purple, dating Robin, and having three of the Batfamily titles.
Jason Blood- Demonologist who has been alive since the time of Camelot. Why exactly Merlin bound him to be the human cage of the demon Etrigan is unknown, with explinations ranging from the idea that he is not actually a real person, merely a shell to restrain Etrigan, to being punished for making a snarky but true comment when Merlin was spying about.
Violet Beklea (OC)- Born to a teenaged mother and a changeling, an artist with slightly unpredictable psychic powers and a flair for hearth magic.
Louise Le Grange (OC)- Deceased evil witch.
It was cold. Freezing, even. He should have worn a jacket, or better yet, not taken that damn bet at all! Travis was a moron anyway, and he had nothing to prove. But Grace had been looking at him with those eyes, and she looked interested, and he’d like to prove things to her. Like the fact that he wanted to be the one having her cheer for him every game, not Travis. And if he did this, then maybe she’d start to wise up to the fact that Travis was an ass.
First he had to do this. Poison Ivy was in Arkham, he thought. And he was willing to bet his game money that Joey from the other school had run with the money his dad got from the Joker.
Those other kids were probably just stupid rumors and shit. C’mon, how many people were really stupid enough to come out to an old house? There weren’t that many girls like Grace around, and he couldn’t think of anything else worth risking his ass for.
The door opened when he went to get the knob, the lock completely destroyed. He wondered if Travis had sent him to some drunken gang party house or something, ‘cause the lock looked shot off. He hadn’t heard anything that said people came here- hell, the freak squad didn’t even come here. The room was dark but clickity clack went the flashlight, and bright light sliced like a knife though the entry hall, showing faded, muddy carpet with disturbing stains, scarred wood panels, a painting on the ground, a dark metal thing showing a dull gleam…
He wanted to turn around now. He knew what messed up silver was, and if this place hadn’t been looted, then something freaky was going on. Like, Scarecrow freaky. Or Killer Croc freaky. This was Gotham. Not even in the Quake had people forgot Gotham’s first rule- If I can take it, its mine.
He turned around and nearly pissed himself. The door was closed, why the fuck hadn’t he heard it close, it was old and no one had lived here forever, and it had been all nice and quiet coming in…
He calmed down. “Not funny, dude,” he muttered. It was just Travis messing with him. The thing- a candlestick- had to be a prop. Travis’ sister was in GU for theater, he thought. Travis got the candlestick from his sister and greased the hinges with some of that stuff from school. He creaked along the entrance way, figuring that grabbing the prop and maybe snagging some moldy bit would prove he’d gone through with this stupid bet.
He grabbed the candlestick and shoved it in the plastic bag he’d brought, then opened the door. He could have grabbed the painting, but Travis would be an ass and say that he hadn’t gone far enough.
He put one foot across…
The roar knocked him off his feet, or was it the light…
He screamed in pain so harsh it made him forget his name.
~
A few miles away, Vi Beklea woke up with what should have been a scream, if it wasn’t for the gag in her mouth. It took a few moments to remove the gag, the knot seeming much trickier than it normally did. By the time she left her bed her movements were more graceful, and she went to her kitchen with a sigh. Four-thirty AM.
Perfect.
Then again, her visions usually weren’t as… persistent. It wasn’t the same person, as far as she could tell- different heights, perspectives, and ghostly, half-heard thoughts. But this was the… fifth dream she’d had of that old house lately. All of the same place, though. Someplace just outside Gotham, if what she could pick up was true.
Part of her, the silly optimistic part of her, thought that four- now five- kids going missing would be news, even in Gotham. Obviously, that wasn’t the case.
One of the cases had made the news, a pretty redhead with a history of drugs and well-connected parents. Opinions were that she was either out on a bender and/or dead.
Well, Vi mused, the dead part was probably right. Just not from an overdose.
Yet again, she wondered if she should call… someone.
“Yes, hello, I have psychic visions and have been dreaming about where five missing kids have been. Yes, visions,” she muttered to herself. “No, I’m not in Arkham. No, this isn’t a prank. No, I don’t have last names, but I’m fairly sure one of them is that girl splashed across the news. Yes, that will go over well. Maybe I could get one of those costumed folk to help, but Jesus, I have no idea how to even start.”
A tiny nagging voice pointed out that the time between visions had been shrinking. She’d gone from a week to two days between them. That, she knew, was called escalation. And it meant that whoever was doing this was either getting crazier or bolder.
Well, she couldn’t get official or unofficial assistance, more kids were dying, and she wasn’t going to get much more sleep until this was over, anyway.
“I am not doing this, I am not doing this, oh, goodness and mercy shall haunt me all the days of my life,” Vi ruffled her short dark hair. “Which shall be a short one.”
She went to get her laptop. Also, pants. She thought they might be useful, though some of those costumed women didn’t… but Vi was doing this to ease her conscience. And get sleep. Not to have people rate her ass.
“So… how to start, how to start… well, Google’s probably a safe bet,” she muttered, typing in ‘haunted houses outside Gotham”. The kid had said the house was known to be haunted.
28,000,000 results, mostly Halloween things well outside the city. Very few people were brave enough to celebrate Halloween in Gotham, and even fewer were willing to go to a haunted house or maze.
“This is going to be a long morning.” Coffee, she admitted, would probably help. She put one of those lovely individual servings of coffee in the machine.
“Let’s refine this sucker,” she tried, adding ‘abandoned’ to her search terms.
13,500,000.
“…I wonder if I could just scale the police building and use the bat signal.” The memory of that door the boy had entered, warped and with the lock shot off, rose in her memory. ‘shot door’ was added.
4,000,000 results, but one of the entries stood out at her.
“Le Grange? That sounds familiar… wasn’t there that show about creepy places,” she muttered, thinking. They hadn’t actually entered the house, just run some recreations and talked to historians. Clicking the link, she grinned wickedly.
“Gotcha.”
~
Stephanie Brown, known as Spoiler, looked at the cloud of swirling cape and shadow roosting on one of Gotham’s overpopulation of gargoyles. “You do it.”
Even under the full-face mask, Stephanie could tell Batgirl was giving her a Look.
“He creeps me out,” she admitted.
“Know that,” Batgirl said in the pensive, yet somehow sarcastic tone that was so weird compared to how fast she moved. Probably because of Oracle teaching her, Steph decided. “Nightwing said.”
“He said Blood creeped me out or that we had to do this?” Stephanie asked.
Cass shrugged, which meant what she had to say was too complicated for the scary ninja who spoke better in movement than words. “They hitched together.”
“…I’m going to assume you meant worked together?” Steph really hoped that was the case. Actually, she thought they had back when Batman and the JLA had gone missing. Cass had learned to speak from a telepath rewriting her brain, which had scrambled her brains a little. She was mostly Cass-levels of normal now, but still had the odd mischosen word. Which was sometimes pretty funny. (She still wanted to know what Cass had said about Batman that had Black Canary howling with laughter. Steph was almost sure Cass had been joking. Babs really didn’t give Cass credit. She wasn’t “Barbara Gordon, Amazing Genius Hacker”, but Cass knew how to work around her difficulties.)
Cass nodded. “That. Said he knew lots.”
Steph would have preferred Oracle, but the original Batgirl was busy, and Nightwing said if anyone knew about Le Grange’s place, it would the creepy magician dude. From what Stephanie could find out from Oracle’s databases, the man had been around since Camelot- well, one of them, at least. Trying to sort out some of the crazy stuff in the past made no sense to her. Robin had told her to think of it like Doctor Who or something, which made no sense to Stephanie. Though the DVDs that had shown up on her windowsill were nice. Robin was a bit… odd sometimes.
Anyway, Steph thought, guy was around for over a thousand years. He’d cheesed off Merlin somehow, and got a demon stuck in his head as punishment. Which sucked, especially when Etrigan decided to come out and act like the destructive firebreathing demon he was.
“We’ll go in through the roof entrance?” Steph asked as Batgirl aimed her grappling hook.
Her answer, as so often was the case, was the exit of a Bat.
She sighed and followed.
Cass was standing in front of a smirking man, her arms crossed and looking up defiantly. The streak of white through red hair pretty much proved that it was who they were looking for. Steph hoped he didn’t provoke Cass into a fight. Batman would probably be annoyed if he got back to Gotham and found out Cass had beaten up a JLA member. Former member, but still.
“Hiya!” Spoiler said. “Nightwing kinda sent us. What do ya know about the Le Grange house?”
He blinked. Steph grinned, knowing that thanks to her mask, Cass was the only one who could tell. Sometimes bluntness worked best.
“Why? Please tell me one of those garish lunatics didn’t decide to take up residence there,” he winced.
“No, but we think that some kids are going in there and not coming out again, so we wanted to make sure,” Steph shrugged and sat cheerfully on the roof porch. “So, what exactly is so bad about the place?”
“I would prefer not to speak of this outside.” Stephanie nodded, and she and Cass followed him inside and through the doorway. Cass tensed when a neighbor passed by, but the woman shot an absent-minded smile and wave before passing by them. Stephanie wondered if it was a spell or just Gotham. Yes, here are some teenaged vigilantes. Nothing strange here…
Well, she thought, it was probably both.
They finally got to his apartment, and Steph looked about curiously. What exactly did a demonologist’s apartment look like?
Apparently, like a museum designed by Steven King. There were a bunch of paintings from different times, all of a tall man with streaked red hair. Not to mention what looked like enough carvings to make any of the creepier Rogues in Gotham happy. Stephanie decided that Jason Blood was a creepy pack-rat who didn’t separate his work from his private life.
…She completely understood why Batman recommended him for the JLA when the weird water and time travel thing happened. Batman obviously felt that creepy pack-ratting was a vital role for any crime fighting team. Look at the Batcave!
“Tell now,” Cass looked unimpressed. Steph grinned as she sat on the nearest chair. Hadn’t Wonder Girl warned her about a talking pillow? She decided to keep an eye out.
“Louise Le Grange was a witch about… is it a century and a half? Closer to two hundred years ago, I believe. I had very little contact with her,” he added, looking like he’d bitten a lemon.
“What, did she try hitting on you?” Steph asked. Cass looked puzzled, and then nodded in conformation. “Okay, I feel deeply sorry for you.” Clingy witch would be not-fun. Clingy evil witch? Yikes.
“…How… Batman mentioned your abilities, I apologize. Back to Louise. It was common knowledge that her servants were deeply loyal to her, but few knew how she managed to cause that, given her temperament. Louise was… high-strung, prone to horrific rages if crossed. When she started showing interest in me, I made a point of avoiding her- I wasn’t sure what she wanted, but I knew it would be unpleasant for me. There was a series of suspicious accidents, and I decided leaving Gotham for a time. If I was correct and Louise had arranged them, she was taking no thoughts as to those around me. If I wanted to return to Gotham, I would have to be careful.
She was a striking, well-connected woman, and her obsession with me was common knowledge,” the redhead frowned and went looking in one of the cabinets.
“She began collecting a couterie of sorts, young men and women who had the ability to do some small magics, or had something interesting about them. Who was in it… a Cobblepot, I believe, perhaps Elias? Marion Gage, Felicity Kane, John Blaine, Matthew Elliot… I know she went after the young Wayne of the time, but he decided to follow my example. Worked quite well for him, if I recall correctly. There were more, but I wasn’t here, so I’ll have to look it up.” He started looking through a stack of yellowed papers. “I should do that lamination process on some of these, I suppose. Things in Gotham have an unfortunate habit of coming back to haunt the city.”
“So did Louise do whatever she did to the servants to her clique?” Stephanie asked. Cass was looking suspiciously at a chair next to her. More specifically at a beige pillow.
Hah. Blonde!Cassie wasn’t pulling her leg.
“Some of them, perhaps. I doubt that she needed it for most of them. She promised them freedom and excitement, two things they felt denied. She flattered their egos and frightened them at need. Or so Marion said, later. Things grew worse around October of 1837. Children started disappearing. Street children, the sort the police wouldn’t actually look for. Then Louise made a mistake,” Blood’s grin turned a bit worrying.
“Took wrong kid?” Cass guessed.
“Yes, a runaway, Claire Swann. The police had been searching for her, and heard rumors of a woman matching Louise’s description. She was… erm, memorable, shall we say? Very blonde, looking a fair amount like Marilyn Monroe, I suppose, though sharper.” He pulled out a heavy box of metal. “Here is a photograph I found- I find that records of the sort can be useful.”
Steph looked at the heavy silver thing, with a black and white photograph of a woman she pegged as early thirties. An old maid for the time, probably isolated and just the way she liked it, given the nasty expression on her face. Or at least that was what the books from the time made it sound like. Though her ‘obsession’ with Blood… well, it was probably less about hormones and more about knowledge.
“When that came out, as well as stories about a dozen other missing children,” he added, placing the box on the table and heading towards a heavily carved bookshelf. “There was a witch hunt. And an angry mob. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Gotham does have terrifying angry mobs. They shot out the lock to her home, and dragged out Louise. Her servants tried to help her, but many of them were killed, thought to be complicit in her works. There was a horrible stench in her basement, and bits of blood. Mind control makes for lackluster servants, I fear. They burned her, supposedly in an accident with a torch. They never did find the bodies, which make me feel that whatever she was doing required the sacrifice of the bodies as well as the children’s deaths.”
“So why are kids going missing now?” Steph asked. “Her ghost or something?”
“Most likely. She would need thirteen sacrifices, if I’ve guessed the ritual correctly. Immortality, of course,” he sighed. Steph remembered that he’d been around since, y’know, Camelot. People who chased immortality probably were annoying idiots to him.
“So… what do we do?” Steph asked.
“I suppose we should go and investigate the house, and scare off any potential victims,” he suggested. “I know a few things to make it more difficult for Louise to get them to actually enter the house, though how she managed to lure them there I’m not sure.”
“Some magic thing-y?” Steph guessed. “They came in contact with it and got hit?”
“Like needle?” Cass clarified.
“It’s possible,” he admitted. “But we won’t know until we find out, I suppose.”
~
Cass looked at the house.
It was a house. It was old. No signs of living people, which was not good. The lock had never been fixed, and was a big rusted hole.
Someone was moving in the treeline. Tall, moved like someone who climbed a lot, and not hostile.
She went to investigate. It was short- the woman didn’t hide.
Cass tried to figure out who she was. She was tall and skinny, with hair too short to grab easy in a fight. She had small scars on her hands and around her eyes. The hands seemed like grappling scars- the kind you got from jumping and climbing stone. Her eyes… it looked like someone clawed them at one point, leaving marks around the eyesocket and cheekbone. She was somewhere older than Oracle and younger than Batman. If she was a hero, Batgirl couldn’t figure out who she was.
~
Vi was currently in what was the most disturbing woods since Poison Ivy’s last fit of pique. Or maybe Swamp Thing’s. It was occasionally difficult to keep track of things when her mind wasn’t always anchored to the present. And Swamp Thing’s hadn’t been disturbing so much as… er… well.
It did, however, make for interesting art. A fairy-tale like painting, disturbing woods in muddy, murky colors, a splash of brightness for the figure, make the trees, after a careful look, resemble skyscrapers…
And then she nearly ran into someone. Admittedly, the woods had some nasty thing tugging at her brain, and the girl was half a foot shorter than her… but was Batgirl.
Whoops.
“Hi,” Vi said wryly. She tugged at her necklace, a long strand of old coins from different eras and countries. The creepy sensation dialed back, and she slid gratefully from “Luna Lovegood” to “slightly more Zen then usual”. “I suppose I should have tried to sneak to the bat signal, then?”
Batgirl stared up at her. She was kind of adorable, in a Gorey art sort of way. The curly shoulder things and the traily, ragged cape ends contrasted interestingly with big blacked out eyes- some sort of lens, she bet. “What do you know?”
“Um, I’m… damn, this never sounds sane, but I’m kind of a psychic?” Vi tried. “I’ve been having these creepy visions about this place, so I went to check it out. Despite having people like Zatanna and Fate and all that, people are still kind of skeptical. Flaky artist discovering… whatever is in there would be easier to swallow than psychic seeing paranormal activity.” She saw a flash of purple near the house. “You’re not alone, are you?”
Batgirl paused before shaking her head. Vi wondered if it was her accent- even after years in Gotham, she slipped into what had been dubbed “Southern Fried Romanian” back in school. Consequences of being raised by an immigrant mother and grandparents included speaking Romanian as easily as English, even if her accent got atrocious while stressed. Actually, Abby would point out she rarely spoke English while stressed, and that she collected languages. “Are you?”
“Stupidly, yes,” Vi admitted. “I did bring tools, though.” She hefted a canvas bag, much spattered by paint and having a few odd devices peeking out. “I’m not completely new at this.”
Just not very experienced. In the ten years since college, she’d gone to use her ‘talents’ to help people about six times. She knew, roughly, what worked in most cases from what she’d read in her father’s workbooks.
Batgirl nodded and walked away. Feeling as nervous as a new girl in high school, Vi followed. A girl about Batgirl’s height was sitting on the porch steps, clad in a dark purple hooded cape. Spoiler? There was also a man studying the doorframe, not quite touching the chipped wood.
“She knows something,” Batgirl told them, pointing at Vi. Feeling really stupid, she waved.
“Hi, Vi Beklea. Five kids that I know of have walked into that house in the past two weeks, yes, I really am psychic. I saw it through their points of view, they almost all went in on a dare or a bet. At least three went in because of a girl, but I can’t tell if it’s the same one. Whatever it is grabs them in a burst of light once they open the door at the end of the entrance hall, and I really shouldn’t have had that third coffee.” Vi poked one of the beams on the wraparound porch, noticing something sullen and yellow under the flaking paint. Something about the waving shape and carvings at the based bothered her. “Did Louise Le Grange design this place herself?”
“I believe she collaborated on it with an architect, yes. You noticed the way it seems to cause negative energy?” the man looked at the beam. “Hmm, these are actually reproductions of a work in the… sixteenth century? Pre-reformation, at any rate. They don’t actually mean anything- the language used wasn’t actually translated properly. And it would have been more efficient to use a variation on the images that were being used around the same time. But I suppose she didn’t care if they were supposed to serve her purpose.”
Vi tapped it with a knitting needle. “The intent when making it caused it to take on a certain shape, and other bits around the house bounce around magic and feed into each other, making it stronger and giving a better coverage. It’s like a nastier version of the stuff I have to prevent burglars.” She looked up from the beam. “Sorry, craft and hearth magic’s my medium. They’re definitely effective, to have lasted so long- even if I took out the beams in the porch, residual stuff would still work for years.” She frowned. “Is this on the chimneys?”
“As a broadcasting antenna? Not that I could detect. Strangely, everything’s well contained- only minimal bleedout of energy into the surrounding area. The fact that the woods near here are so disorienting is due more to time than anything else,” the man looked a bit sheepish. “I probably should have dealt with this before, but I thought the house was in far worse shape. If it collapsed- which it should have- this would be destroyed, most with psychic abilities, especially those who have lived here for a while, would have a massive headache, and problem solved.” He sighed. “These things can never be easy.”
Vi nodded. “So… I suppose going in through the door would be a bad plan?” She walked over to the doorway, tapping it with the knitting needle. “Mmm. It’s a trap. This is a complete surprise.”
“Are you actually doing anything with that?” Spoiler asked, looking curious. Well, Vi thought it was curious.
“Testing flows, kind of like an electrical meter,” Vi admitted. “I can get a decent idea of what something is, and the metal in the needle conducts it safely. Besides, in a city like Gotham a girl needs a stabby item that no one thinks anything of.”
Spoiler nodded. “Okay, then. I just…”
“Thought I was completely batshit?” Vi grinned.
“Knitting needles aren’t exactly the usual tools for dowsing like that,” the man pointed out. Vi thought about it.
“That’s the point, isn’t it?” Vi pointed out. He would, she admitted, probably be a good deal more intimidating if she wasn’t about the exact same height. It was one of those little things that ruined airs of mystery. “The whole house is a cross between an echo chamber and a generator of sorts. It bounces energy, and sucks up some from outside sources, but…” here she frowned. “It’s intake is a lot bigger than the outtake. The intake valve is the entranceway. We’d probably get caught up in it if we go in the door.”
“So in through the windows?” He suggested.
Batgirl held up a rock the size of both her fists and threw it at a window, causing an unholy shriek that caused everyone to cover their ears and Vi to double up in pain.
“That seems like it wasn’t the best thought out action,” the man (Vi really did have to figure out his name) shook off glass from his jacket.
~
Spoiler sighed and used another rock to bash out more of the glass, noticing that there wasn’t any more screaming and glass behaving unnaturally. But even though she didn’t know a lot about magic, she had a feeling that bleeding in the creepy house would not be a good thing. After she got rid of most of it, she turned to the others.
Vi was tapping the wood of one of the poles holding up the fence, then rummaging around in her bag, pulling out what looked like knives with mirrors glued to them. And nothing to divide the hilt and blade, so it kind of was like a Batarang. Or a really cool throwing knife.
“Um, if I’m right these can help brake locks if we get separated,” she said, handing them out. “Or at least scramble them for a bit so you can escape. They can be broken though, so be careful.” Steph took one and put in an empty pocket in her utility belt. She handed one to Cass, who scowled at it and tucked it away as well.
No one really wanted to be the first to enter Rose Red Redux, so Steph decided she might as well set an example. Cass followed to keep her out of trouble, and Vi entered with a ready grin, followed by a sighing, Batman-like Jason Blood.
~
The room had faded wallpaper that seemed to fit the way the light would have hit the walls, but none of it sagged. Vi frowned, checking the heavy fabric. It was red and gold velvet that she would have pegged as a masculine design, and Louise Le Grange had the home built for herself. Perhaps it had been made to make a point about the owner.
Studying the heavy, matching furniture, she had to admit she was probably right. Mahogany, she thought, accented with leather and red velvet.
The man whose name she had not gotten was looking cautiously at the door when the fireplace whooshed to life, causing him to jump. Batgirl was smirking a bit, and Spoiler was cursing and putting out her cape, since the corner had been too near the ghostly flames.
Out of the flames stepped a tall woman, maybe up to the tip of Vi’s nose. Curly hair pulled back, wide eyes, mocking smile, and a dress that wasn’t exactly Jane Austen. The sleeves were Tudor-ish, she guessed, with a lower waist and puffy back. Maybe 1820s, 1830s? It was pre-War Between The States, that was all she knew.
Of course, she was also made of pale green fire that moved like water, so Vi probably shouldn’t be commenting on the dress.
“Well, as I live and breathe-“ she said in a crackly voice.
“Which you aren’t,” Spoiler muttered. Everyone ignored her.
“Is that you, Mr. Blood?” the spirit asked coyly. Spoiler mimed gagging, which probably helped everyone living’s “holy shit” factor. “How are you still walking around?”
Vi blinked. Okay, this was getting a bit weirder than she had been anticipating. Louise Le Grange had died over a century and a half ago. Either this man had an uncanny resemblance to an ancestor…
“A method which is quite useless to you, and far more a curse than anything,” he said with a sigh. “So please desist from what I know you’re thinking.”
…Or something else entirely. She didn’t see pointy ears, but god knows that meant nothing. Except for a lack of Spock jokes.
“Now you’ve got me curious, though,” Le Grange said with a smirk. “And I’m quite impossible to dissuade.” She sat cheerfully on the couch, not setting it on fire. An act of will? Or was the fire only a supernatural metaphor? “So, I’m afraid you shouldn’t bother. Now, how exactly are you still walking around?”
~
Batgirl walked to the door, noticing it was coated with a film of green. She paused to look at the magicians in the group. Le Grange was staring at Blood, who was trying to prepare something without her noticing. Spoiler was trying to keep Vi from breaking. Vi didn’t seem to need much help, though, so Batgirl was going to listen to what Oracle would say and use her brain.
She pulled out a Batarang and slowly held it to the green flame. She felt a buzzing and scowled. Like a wire. Not even touching before it hurt a bit. They could maybe get through, but she wasn’t sure they wouldn’t be hurt badly.
She pulled out the knife, noticing shapes cut in the glass. It was almost… pretty. And sharp. The buzzing didn’t happen, so she looked for where the green light was heaviest.
The lock. Lots of things with locks here.
She nodded at Steph, who started moving Vi closer to the door. The woman looked at Blood, who was too close to Le Grange to run away, then at Batgirl.
Cass showed her the knife, then nodded at Le Grange. Could it hurt her?
The strange woman closed her eyes, thinking? She saw things. Maybe seeing if it would work.
She opened her eyes and nodded, then threw one of the knives with surprising aim. It hit Le Grange in the heart, and the green light collapsed with a whoosh.
~
Batgirl was clearly disapproving, so Vi decided to explain. Really, communication solved so many problems. Well, except for the bits about psychic powers. But that could be blamed on bad communication, such as lying by fakes.
“It scrambled her signal for a little bit. Probably a very little bit, actually,” Vi said. “We have about fifteen minutes to do… whatever we’re actually supposed to do.”
Blood- who was Jason Blood, on the Justice League for about five minutes, if she remembered right- was studying the knife. A crack had appeared in the mirrored glass, and Vi mourned it a bit. She’d been making those knives for a decade, and had put a ton of effort into learning how to make mirrors for them. “Out of curiousity, where did you learn to make these?”
“My dad’s workbooks,” Vi said, holding out her hand to no actual use. He was tapping it curiously. “They got FedExed to me when I turned eighteen.” She rather loved her cousins. Her eldest brother was a jackass, but Nate had actually explained things.
“Hmm… these look vaguely familiar. Does magic run in your family?” he asked.
“You could say that,” Vi said wryly. “Dad was a changeling. He could do the whole Pied Piper shtick with his violin. The family has a range of gifts. Mind you, I didn’t know this until I got the books, but I suppose it’s the thought that counts.” That was an extremely abridged version of the story, but considering the fact that a ghost witch- oh, god, that sounded ridiculous in her own head- was probably going to come back to kill them all in a few minutes, they didn’t have much time.
“This is nice, but maybe we should follow Batgirl?” Spoiler said, pointing at the open door.
“Probably,” Vi said, pretending she didn’t notice him tucking the broken knife in his pocket. It wasn’t like she hadn’t given him a whole one a little bit ago.
~
Stephanie was trying to be stealthy. It was one of the things she was good at. Of course, seeing as the other two weren’t bothering…
“Batgirl?” she called out. “Where’d you go?”
A dark blur came from the vaulted ceiling and landed in front of her.
She totally didn’t scream.
“Don’t do that!” Steph said, looking warily up at the ceiling.
“Priceless?” Cass tried, grin apparent even under the mask.
A chuckle from the peanut gallery, and Steph looked around. There was high ceilings with a wooden vault-y thing evidently strong enough to hold Cass, barely faded green wallpaper with big roses, dirty carpet runner, and gouges in the wooden floor. Old gouges, probably from Le Grange’s death. There was also a staircase leading to a darkened upstairs.
“Where should we go?” she asked.
“She’d have needed a workroom- Gotham was a dangerous town even then. She couldn’t have risked the details of what she was doing to leak out, and many of her experiments would have needed to be kept safely from the rest of the household, to stop accidental poisoning if nothing else. There are two places for Le Grange to have hidden her workroom- and her workroom will have the source of whatever power gives her sway over the house. One is in a room she frequents- a study or her bedroom. The second is the usual cliché,” Blood explained.
“The basement,” Steph scowled.
“Split up?” Cass suggested. Steph made a mental note to convince Oracle that Cass desperately needed to see a horror movie or six.
“That never ends well,” Blood pointed out. “Miss Beklea, I don’t suppose you can tell where the source of Le Grange’s power is coming from?”
Vi shook her head. “The house itself is trying to hide it. I can’t pull the kid’s… signatures, I guess. Even if they were dead, the security wall Le Grange built should have kept them trapped in the house. Kind of like a security guard, actually. It’s slightly alive. Not smart, really, but capable of some reactions.”
“House would try harder when you poke the wrong spot,” Cass pointed out. Stupid guards did that.
Vi nodded. “Hard to tell while wearing this, though,” she held up the chain of old coins, clinking reassuringly. “And if I take it off I’d be more of a liability. Possession is never fun.”
“A thorough search it is, then,” Blood said. “Probably for the best- she might have attempted to build in multiple such centers in case of discovery.”
Cass tilted her head.
“Le Grange might have made more than one place for us to destroy,” Steph translated. “Planning ahead,” she said with a grin. Cass nodded.
“Upstairs or downstairs?” Vi asked. She had a knitting needle in one hand, and a mirror-knife in the other.
Steph decided that she really didn’t pull off threatening. Even with the creepier than normal shadows.
~
“Upstairs,” said Jason Blood with a slightly disturbing smile. But the memory of Louise Le Grange and the incident involving a spider, a shriek, and a fountain. “While I can see her using the basement for extra security, I cannot imagine her spending extra time there, given the limits on mind-controlled servants. Besides, it not like it actually worked last time."
Clearing a dank basement that would have had to have leaked in her long dormancy would be next to impossible for a bundle of addled teenagers. Louise seemed to think she was still alive, with the same mannerisms. Odds were good that Louise would still be afraid of spiders.
“Upstairs it is then,” Spoiler said, heading quickly up the stairs.
“Miss Beklea-“ he started, to get firmly interrupted.
“Vi. Or Violet, if you have to. Miss Beklea is my mother.” She gave a puckish grin and shone a flashlight up the stairs with surprisingly methodical movements. “I’m the artist, she’s the writer.”
“Writer? Wait, Roxanne Beklea?” Spoiler was bouncing a little. “Her stuff is awesome!”
Vi turned to her. “Yeah, it’s awesome until she decides that asking you five million questions about paint is a good idea. And that ARCs are good Christmas presents.” She refocused on Jason. “Sorry for the interruption.”
“Did you manage to discover how Le Grange’s victims were lured inside the house? I can’t imagine more than a few people a decade are willing to come out here, and most would not make it as far as the clearing. You mentioned that most of them were here on a bet?” He was curious about that fact, having a suspicion that if they did not at least contemplate the idea of a living, willing accomplice, it would come back to haunt them.
“Not with all of them- the most recent boy was here due to a bet. He was…” The flashlight shook a little bit. “He was egged on by a girl. So was another of the victims, another boy a few school districts over. The rest weren’t really reflecting on the why. Someone helped the runaway- Annie Fredricks, I think- out of an alleyway, and they had problems carrying her. She was maybe what, ninety pounds? It might have been a teenage girl.”
“Why?” Batgirl asked. “How did they come here?”
“Like calls to like,” Jason reminded the girl. “She might not have been driven away, but…”
“Called home?” Batgirl finished. He nodded. “So what does Le Grange want?”
“Her body back, or some sort of substitution, I’d guess,” Violet was looking at the staircase warily. “I’m also guessing that the other stairways are more discreet.”
“The second floor was for guests, the third for servants, and the fourth for herself,” he listed. “I would assume the fourth floor would be where her materials would be.”
“So… what was Le Grange originally planning on doing?” Spoiler asked in the tones of someone who really didn’t want to know.
“An immortality ritual that was doomed to failure anyway,” he answered sourly. They usually failed, and were usually messy. Somehow he ended up having to clean it up.
“Can she body-hop? Because I’ve seen that movie and it sucked,” Spoiler was- he thought- looking around at the hallway. “Also, is it just me or is this a trap?”
“I’m not certain, and it’s most likely a trap, yes,” he admitted just as the doors creaked open, gleaming green reflections showing at eyelevel even without the flashlight. The teenagers were slightly slack-jawed and loose limbed, much like the servants had been when Louise was alive.
“Braaiiins,” Spoiler said mockingly.
Somewhere, he knew, Etrigan was laughing at him.
~
Stephanie reviewed what she knew about the zombies. (Well, people who were being mind-controlled. But zombie was quicker and fit.)
One- They didn’t feel pain as much as they would if they were normal.
Two- They were a bit slower.
Three- They couldn’t be drugged.
Four- They were stronger than your average bear.
Five- Their eyes were really freaky and glowy.
Cass had knocked one over with something that Steph knew from experience would have someone throw up. The zombie was clumsy getting up, but more from the mind-control than pain.
Blood was attempting something magic that was crashing against green fog, and Steph was pretty sure only one of the magicians were holding back. After all, minions were disposable. Jason would have to deal with the wrath of an angry Bat if Cass got hurt.
Vi had thrown a long red ribbon that was tangling over one of their opponents, and holding off her opponents pretty well. Mostly because the ribbon was either a lot longer or a lot stronger than it looked. Or maybe both. A tiny model net the size of her hand was thrown, growing and catching the ribbon girl and another boy, who couldn’t move. Another was behind her, and she mostly dodged the zombie, a knife meant for her gut hitting her thigh instead.
And then Stephanie noticed the curling green light that was busy defying laws of science she was supposed to be studying and filling the room.
She blacked out pretty quickly.
Part Two is found at...
http://clutzycricket.livejournal.com/8392.html#cutid1
Story title: And I Kinda Like Mine
Word Count: 11,604
Rating: PG-13
Summary: When Batman’s away, someone has to deal with the haunted house and its zombie army. Batgirl is not impressed, Spoiler thinks that Batgirl needs to watch more horror movies, the demonologist is uncomfortable, and the psychic is fed up.
Warnings: Skirting around the idea of bondage when someone is out of it in two scenes, not for sexual purposes.
WTFBrain's wonderful mix is to be found here- http://inmediasres.dreamwidth.org/7914.html
Dramatis Personae:
Batgirl- Cassandra Cain, the daughter of assassin David Cain. Taught since birth to read body language as her only language, one of the best fighters in the world, though functionally illiterate.
Spoiler- Stephanie Brown, daughter of minor villain the Cluemaster. She became Spoiler originally to stop her father, kept at it because she liked it. Probably Cassandra’s best friend. Known for wearing purple, dating Robin, and having three of the Batfamily titles.
Jason Blood- Demonologist who has been alive since the time of Camelot. Why exactly Merlin bound him to be the human cage of the demon Etrigan is unknown, with explinations ranging from the idea that he is not actually a real person, merely a shell to restrain Etrigan, to being punished for making a snarky but true comment when Merlin was spying about.
Violet Beklea (OC)- Born to a teenaged mother and a changeling, an artist with slightly unpredictable psychic powers and a flair for hearth magic.
Louise Le Grange (OC)- Deceased evil witch.
It was cold. Freezing, even. He should have worn a jacket, or better yet, not taken that damn bet at all! Travis was a moron anyway, and he had nothing to prove. But Grace had been looking at him with those eyes, and she looked interested, and he’d like to prove things to her. Like the fact that he wanted to be the one having her cheer for him every game, not Travis. And if he did this, then maybe she’d start to wise up to the fact that Travis was an ass.
First he had to do this. Poison Ivy was in Arkham, he thought. And he was willing to bet his game money that Joey from the other school had run with the money his dad got from the Joker.
Those other kids were probably just stupid rumors and shit. C’mon, how many people were really stupid enough to come out to an old house? There weren’t that many girls like Grace around, and he couldn’t think of anything else worth risking his ass for.
The door opened when he went to get the knob, the lock completely destroyed. He wondered if Travis had sent him to some drunken gang party house or something, ‘cause the lock looked shot off. He hadn’t heard anything that said people came here- hell, the freak squad didn’t even come here. The room was dark but clickity clack went the flashlight, and bright light sliced like a knife though the entry hall, showing faded, muddy carpet with disturbing stains, scarred wood panels, a painting on the ground, a dark metal thing showing a dull gleam…
He wanted to turn around now. He knew what messed up silver was, and if this place hadn’t been looted, then something freaky was going on. Like, Scarecrow freaky. Or Killer Croc freaky. This was Gotham. Not even in the Quake had people forgot Gotham’s first rule- If I can take it, its mine.
He turned around and nearly pissed himself. The door was closed, why the fuck hadn’t he heard it close, it was old and no one had lived here forever, and it had been all nice and quiet coming in…
He calmed down. “Not funny, dude,” he muttered. It was just Travis messing with him. The thing- a candlestick- had to be a prop. Travis’ sister was in GU for theater, he thought. Travis got the candlestick from his sister and greased the hinges with some of that stuff from school. He creaked along the entrance way, figuring that grabbing the prop and maybe snagging some moldy bit would prove he’d gone through with this stupid bet.
He grabbed the candlestick and shoved it in the plastic bag he’d brought, then opened the door. He could have grabbed the painting, but Travis would be an ass and say that he hadn’t gone far enough.
He put one foot across…
The roar knocked him off his feet, or was it the light…
He screamed in pain so harsh it made him forget his name.
~
A few miles away, Vi Beklea woke up with what should have been a scream, if it wasn’t for the gag in her mouth. It took a few moments to remove the gag, the knot seeming much trickier than it normally did. By the time she left her bed her movements were more graceful, and she went to her kitchen with a sigh. Four-thirty AM.
Perfect.
Then again, her visions usually weren’t as… persistent. It wasn’t the same person, as far as she could tell- different heights, perspectives, and ghostly, half-heard thoughts. But this was the… fifth dream she’d had of that old house lately. All of the same place, though. Someplace just outside Gotham, if what she could pick up was true.
Part of her, the silly optimistic part of her, thought that four- now five- kids going missing would be news, even in Gotham. Obviously, that wasn’t the case.
One of the cases had made the news, a pretty redhead with a history of drugs and well-connected parents. Opinions were that she was either out on a bender and/or dead.
Well, Vi mused, the dead part was probably right. Just not from an overdose.
Yet again, she wondered if she should call… someone.
“Yes, hello, I have psychic visions and have been dreaming about where five missing kids have been. Yes, visions,” she muttered to herself. “No, I’m not in Arkham. No, this isn’t a prank. No, I don’t have last names, but I’m fairly sure one of them is that girl splashed across the news. Yes, that will go over well. Maybe I could get one of those costumed folk to help, but Jesus, I have no idea how to even start.”
A tiny nagging voice pointed out that the time between visions had been shrinking. She’d gone from a week to two days between them. That, she knew, was called escalation. And it meant that whoever was doing this was either getting crazier or bolder.
Well, she couldn’t get official or unofficial assistance, more kids were dying, and she wasn’t going to get much more sleep until this was over, anyway.
“I am not doing this, I am not doing this, oh, goodness and mercy shall haunt me all the days of my life,” Vi ruffled her short dark hair. “Which shall be a short one.”
She went to get her laptop. Also, pants. She thought they might be useful, though some of those costumed women didn’t… but Vi was doing this to ease her conscience. And get sleep. Not to have people rate her ass.
“So… how to start, how to start… well, Google’s probably a safe bet,” she muttered, typing in ‘haunted houses outside Gotham”. The kid had said the house was known to be haunted.
28,000,000 results, mostly Halloween things well outside the city. Very few people were brave enough to celebrate Halloween in Gotham, and even fewer were willing to go to a haunted house or maze.
“This is going to be a long morning.” Coffee, she admitted, would probably help. She put one of those lovely individual servings of coffee in the machine.
“Let’s refine this sucker,” she tried, adding ‘abandoned’ to her search terms.
13,500,000.
“…I wonder if I could just scale the police building and use the bat signal.” The memory of that door the boy had entered, warped and with the lock shot off, rose in her memory. ‘shot door’ was added.
4,000,000 results, but one of the entries stood out at her.
“Le Grange? That sounds familiar… wasn’t there that show about creepy places,” she muttered, thinking. They hadn’t actually entered the house, just run some recreations and talked to historians. Clicking the link, she grinned wickedly.
“Gotcha.”
~
Stephanie Brown, known as Spoiler, looked at the cloud of swirling cape and shadow roosting on one of Gotham’s overpopulation of gargoyles. “You do it.”
Even under the full-face mask, Stephanie could tell Batgirl was giving her a Look.
“He creeps me out,” she admitted.
“Know that,” Batgirl said in the pensive, yet somehow sarcastic tone that was so weird compared to how fast she moved. Probably because of Oracle teaching her, Steph decided. “Nightwing said.”
“He said Blood creeped me out or that we had to do this?” Stephanie asked.
Cass shrugged, which meant what she had to say was too complicated for the scary ninja who spoke better in movement than words. “They hitched together.”
“…I’m going to assume you meant worked together?” Steph really hoped that was the case. Actually, she thought they had back when Batman and the JLA had gone missing. Cass had learned to speak from a telepath rewriting her brain, which had scrambled her brains a little. She was mostly Cass-levels of normal now, but still had the odd mischosen word. Which was sometimes pretty funny. (She still wanted to know what Cass had said about Batman that had Black Canary howling with laughter. Steph was almost sure Cass had been joking. Babs really didn’t give Cass credit. She wasn’t “Barbara Gordon, Amazing Genius Hacker”, but Cass knew how to work around her difficulties.)
Cass nodded. “That. Said he knew lots.”
Steph would have preferred Oracle, but the original Batgirl was busy, and Nightwing said if anyone knew about Le Grange’s place, it would the creepy magician dude. From what Stephanie could find out from Oracle’s databases, the man had been around since Camelot- well, one of them, at least. Trying to sort out some of the crazy stuff in the past made no sense to her. Robin had told her to think of it like Doctor Who or something, which made no sense to Stephanie. Though the DVDs that had shown up on her windowsill were nice. Robin was a bit… odd sometimes.
Anyway, Steph thought, guy was around for over a thousand years. He’d cheesed off Merlin somehow, and got a demon stuck in his head as punishment. Which sucked, especially when Etrigan decided to come out and act like the destructive firebreathing demon he was.
“We’ll go in through the roof entrance?” Steph asked as Batgirl aimed her grappling hook.
Her answer, as so often was the case, was the exit of a Bat.
She sighed and followed.
Cass was standing in front of a smirking man, her arms crossed and looking up defiantly. The streak of white through red hair pretty much proved that it was who they were looking for. Steph hoped he didn’t provoke Cass into a fight. Batman would probably be annoyed if he got back to Gotham and found out Cass had beaten up a JLA member. Former member, but still.
“Hiya!” Spoiler said. “Nightwing kinda sent us. What do ya know about the Le Grange house?”
He blinked. Steph grinned, knowing that thanks to her mask, Cass was the only one who could tell. Sometimes bluntness worked best.
“Why? Please tell me one of those garish lunatics didn’t decide to take up residence there,” he winced.
“No, but we think that some kids are going in there and not coming out again, so we wanted to make sure,” Steph shrugged and sat cheerfully on the roof porch. “So, what exactly is so bad about the place?”
“I would prefer not to speak of this outside.” Stephanie nodded, and she and Cass followed him inside and through the doorway. Cass tensed when a neighbor passed by, but the woman shot an absent-minded smile and wave before passing by them. Stephanie wondered if it was a spell or just Gotham. Yes, here are some teenaged vigilantes. Nothing strange here…
Well, she thought, it was probably both.
They finally got to his apartment, and Steph looked about curiously. What exactly did a demonologist’s apartment look like?
Apparently, like a museum designed by Steven King. There were a bunch of paintings from different times, all of a tall man with streaked red hair. Not to mention what looked like enough carvings to make any of the creepier Rogues in Gotham happy. Stephanie decided that Jason Blood was a creepy pack-rat who didn’t separate his work from his private life.
…She completely understood why Batman recommended him for the JLA when the weird water and time travel thing happened. Batman obviously felt that creepy pack-ratting was a vital role for any crime fighting team. Look at the Batcave!
“Tell now,” Cass looked unimpressed. Steph grinned as she sat on the nearest chair. Hadn’t Wonder Girl warned her about a talking pillow? She decided to keep an eye out.
“Louise Le Grange was a witch about… is it a century and a half? Closer to two hundred years ago, I believe. I had very little contact with her,” he added, looking like he’d bitten a lemon.
“What, did she try hitting on you?” Steph asked. Cass looked puzzled, and then nodded in conformation. “Okay, I feel deeply sorry for you.” Clingy witch would be not-fun. Clingy evil witch? Yikes.
“…How… Batman mentioned your abilities, I apologize. Back to Louise. It was common knowledge that her servants were deeply loyal to her, but few knew how she managed to cause that, given her temperament. Louise was… high-strung, prone to horrific rages if crossed. When she started showing interest in me, I made a point of avoiding her- I wasn’t sure what she wanted, but I knew it would be unpleasant for me. There was a series of suspicious accidents, and I decided leaving Gotham for a time. If I was correct and Louise had arranged them, she was taking no thoughts as to those around me. If I wanted to return to Gotham, I would have to be careful.
She was a striking, well-connected woman, and her obsession with me was common knowledge,” the redhead frowned and went looking in one of the cabinets.
“She began collecting a couterie of sorts, young men and women who had the ability to do some small magics, or had something interesting about them. Who was in it… a Cobblepot, I believe, perhaps Elias? Marion Gage, Felicity Kane, John Blaine, Matthew Elliot… I know she went after the young Wayne of the time, but he decided to follow my example. Worked quite well for him, if I recall correctly. There were more, but I wasn’t here, so I’ll have to look it up.” He started looking through a stack of yellowed papers. “I should do that lamination process on some of these, I suppose. Things in Gotham have an unfortunate habit of coming back to haunt the city.”
“So did Louise do whatever she did to the servants to her clique?” Stephanie asked. Cass was looking suspiciously at a chair next to her. More specifically at a beige pillow.
Hah. Blonde!Cassie wasn’t pulling her leg.
“Some of them, perhaps. I doubt that she needed it for most of them. She promised them freedom and excitement, two things they felt denied. She flattered their egos and frightened them at need. Or so Marion said, later. Things grew worse around October of 1837. Children started disappearing. Street children, the sort the police wouldn’t actually look for. Then Louise made a mistake,” Blood’s grin turned a bit worrying.
“Took wrong kid?” Cass guessed.
“Yes, a runaway, Claire Swann. The police had been searching for her, and heard rumors of a woman matching Louise’s description. She was… erm, memorable, shall we say? Very blonde, looking a fair amount like Marilyn Monroe, I suppose, though sharper.” He pulled out a heavy box of metal. “Here is a photograph I found- I find that records of the sort can be useful.”
Steph looked at the heavy silver thing, with a black and white photograph of a woman she pegged as early thirties. An old maid for the time, probably isolated and just the way she liked it, given the nasty expression on her face. Or at least that was what the books from the time made it sound like. Though her ‘obsession’ with Blood… well, it was probably less about hormones and more about knowledge.
“When that came out, as well as stories about a dozen other missing children,” he added, placing the box on the table and heading towards a heavily carved bookshelf. “There was a witch hunt. And an angry mob. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Gotham does have terrifying angry mobs. They shot out the lock to her home, and dragged out Louise. Her servants tried to help her, but many of them were killed, thought to be complicit in her works. There was a horrible stench in her basement, and bits of blood. Mind control makes for lackluster servants, I fear. They burned her, supposedly in an accident with a torch. They never did find the bodies, which make me feel that whatever she was doing required the sacrifice of the bodies as well as the children’s deaths.”
“So why are kids going missing now?” Steph asked. “Her ghost or something?”
“Most likely. She would need thirteen sacrifices, if I’ve guessed the ritual correctly. Immortality, of course,” he sighed. Steph remembered that he’d been around since, y’know, Camelot. People who chased immortality probably were annoying idiots to him.
“So… what do we do?” Steph asked.
“I suppose we should go and investigate the house, and scare off any potential victims,” he suggested. “I know a few things to make it more difficult for Louise to get them to actually enter the house, though how she managed to lure them there I’m not sure.”
“Some magic thing-y?” Steph guessed. “They came in contact with it and got hit?”
“Like needle?” Cass clarified.
“It’s possible,” he admitted. “But we won’t know until we find out, I suppose.”
~
Cass looked at the house.
It was a house. It was old. No signs of living people, which was not good. The lock had never been fixed, and was a big rusted hole.
Someone was moving in the treeline. Tall, moved like someone who climbed a lot, and not hostile.
She went to investigate. It was short- the woman didn’t hide.
Cass tried to figure out who she was. She was tall and skinny, with hair too short to grab easy in a fight. She had small scars on her hands and around her eyes. The hands seemed like grappling scars- the kind you got from jumping and climbing stone. Her eyes… it looked like someone clawed them at one point, leaving marks around the eyesocket and cheekbone. She was somewhere older than Oracle and younger than Batman. If she was a hero, Batgirl couldn’t figure out who she was.
~
Vi was currently in what was the most disturbing woods since Poison Ivy’s last fit of pique. Or maybe Swamp Thing’s. It was occasionally difficult to keep track of things when her mind wasn’t always anchored to the present. And Swamp Thing’s hadn’t been disturbing so much as… er… well.
It did, however, make for interesting art. A fairy-tale like painting, disturbing woods in muddy, murky colors, a splash of brightness for the figure, make the trees, after a careful look, resemble skyscrapers…
And then she nearly ran into someone. Admittedly, the woods had some nasty thing tugging at her brain, and the girl was half a foot shorter than her… but was Batgirl.
Whoops.
“Hi,” Vi said wryly. She tugged at her necklace, a long strand of old coins from different eras and countries. The creepy sensation dialed back, and she slid gratefully from “Luna Lovegood” to “slightly more Zen then usual”. “I suppose I should have tried to sneak to the bat signal, then?”
Batgirl stared up at her. She was kind of adorable, in a Gorey art sort of way. The curly shoulder things and the traily, ragged cape ends contrasted interestingly with big blacked out eyes- some sort of lens, she bet. “What do you know?”
“Um, I’m… damn, this never sounds sane, but I’m kind of a psychic?” Vi tried. “I’ve been having these creepy visions about this place, so I went to check it out. Despite having people like Zatanna and Fate and all that, people are still kind of skeptical. Flaky artist discovering… whatever is in there would be easier to swallow than psychic seeing paranormal activity.” She saw a flash of purple near the house. “You’re not alone, are you?”
Batgirl paused before shaking her head. Vi wondered if it was her accent- even after years in Gotham, she slipped into what had been dubbed “Southern Fried Romanian” back in school. Consequences of being raised by an immigrant mother and grandparents included speaking Romanian as easily as English, even if her accent got atrocious while stressed. Actually, Abby would point out she rarely spoke English while stressed, and that she collected languages. “Are you?”
“Stupidly, yes,” Vi admitted. “I did bring tools, though.” She hefted a canvas bag, much spattered by paint and having a few odd devices peeking out. “I’m not completely new at this.”
Just not very experienced. In the ten years since college, she’d gone to use her ‘talents’ to help people about six times. She knew, roughly, what worked in most cases from what she’d read in her father’s workbooks.
Batgirl nodded and walked away. Feeling as nervous as a new girl in high school, Vi followed. A girl about Batgirl’s height was sitting on the porch steps, clad in a dark purple hooded cape. Spoiler? There was also a man studying the doorframe, not quite touching the chipped wood.
“She knows something,” Batgirl told them, pointing at Vi. Feeling really stupid, she waved.
“Hi, Vi Beklea. Five kids that I know of have walked into that house in the past two weeks, yes, I really am psychic. I saw it through their points of view, they almost all went in on a dare or a bet. At least three went in because of a girl, but I can’t tell if it’s the same one. Whatever it is grabs them in a burst of light once they open the door at the end of the entrance hall, and I really shouldn’t have had that third coffee.” Vi poked one of the beams on the wraparound porch, noticing something sullen and yellow under the flaking paint. Something about the waving shape and carvings at the based bothered her. “Did Louise Le Grange design this place herself?”
“I believe she collaborated on it with an architect, yes. You noticed the way it seems to cause negative energy?” the man looked at the beam. “Hmm, these are actually reproductions of a work in the… sixteenth century? Pre-reformation, at any rate. They don’t actually mean anything- the language used wasn’t actually translated properly. And it would have been more efficient to use a variation on the images that were being used around the same time. But I suppose she didn’t care if they were supposed to serve her purpose.”
Vi tapped it with a knitting needle. “The intent when making it caused it to take on a certain shape, and other bits around the house bounce around magic and feed into each other, making it stronger and giving a better coverage. It’s like a nastier version of the stuff I have to prevent burglars.” She looked up from the beam. “Sorry, craft and hearth magic’s my medium. They’re definitely effective, to have lasted so long- even if I took out the beams in the porch, residual stuff would still work for years.” She frowned. “Is this on the chimneys?”
“As a broadcasting antenna? Not that I could detect. Strangely, everything’s well contained- only minimal bleedout of energy into the surrounding area. The fact that the woods near here are so disorienting is due more to time than anything else,” the man looked a bit sheepish. “I probably should have dealt with this before, but I thought the house was in far worse shape. If it collapsed- which it should have- this would be destroyed, most with psychic abilities, especially those who have lived here for a while, would have a massive headache, and problem solved.” He sighed. “These things can never be easy.”
Vi nodded. “So… I suppose going in through the door would be a bad plan?” She walked over to the doorway, tapping it with the knitting needle. “Mmm. It’s a trap. This is a complete surprise.”
“Are you actually doing anything with that?” Spoiler asked, looking curious. Well, Vi thought it was curious.
“Testing flows, kind of like an electrical meter,” Vi admitted. “I can get a decent idea of what something is, and the metal in the needle conducts it safely. Besides, in a city like Gotham a girl needs a stabby item that no one thinks anything of.”
Spoiler nodded. “Okay, then. I just…”
“Thought I was completely batshit?” Vi grinned.
“Knitting needles aren’t exactly the usual tools for dowsing like that,” the man pointed out. Vi thought about it.
“That’s the point, isn’t it?” Vi pointed out. He would, she admitted, probably be a good deal more intimidating if she wasn’t about the exact same height. It was one of those little things that ruined airs of mystery. “The whole house is a cross between an echo chamber and a generator of sorts. It bounces energy, and sucks up some from outside sources, but…” here she frowned. “It’s intake is a lot bigger than the outtake. The intake valve is the entranceway. We’d probably get caught up in it if we go in the door.”
“So in through the windows?” He suggested.
Batgirl held up a rock the size of both her fists and threw it at a window, causing an unholy shriek that caused everyone to cover their ears and Vi to double up in pain.
“That seems like it wasn’t the best thought out action,” the man (Vi really did have to figure out his name) shook off glass from his jacket.
~
Spoiler sighed and used another rock to bash out more of the glass, noticing that there wasn’t any more screaming and glass behaving unnaturally. But even though she didn’t know a lot about magic, she had a feeling that bleeding in the creepy house would not be a good thing. After she got rid of most of it, she turned to the others.
Vi was tapping the wood of one of the poles holding up the fence, then rummaging around in her bag, pulling out what looked like knives with mirrors glued to them. And nothing to divide the hilt and blade, so it kind of was like a Batarang. Or a really cool throwing knife.
“Um, if I’m right these can help brake locks if we get separated,” she said, handing them out. “Or at least scramble them for a bit so you can escape. They can be broken though, so be careful.” Steph took one and put in an empty pocket in her utility belt. She handed one to Cass, who scowled at it and tucked it away as well.
No one really wanted to be the first to enter Rose Red Redux, so Steph decided she might as well set an example. Cass followed to keep her out of trouble, and Vi entered with a ready grin, followed by a sighing, Batman-like Jason Blood.
~
The room had faded wallpaper that seemed to fit the way the light would have hit the walls, but none of it sagged. Vi frowned, checking the heavy fabric. It was red and gold velvet that she would have pegged as a masculine design, and Louise Le Grange had the home built for herself. Perhaps it had been made to make a point about the owner.
Studying the heavy, matching furniture, she had to admit she was probably right. Mahogany, she thought, accented with leather and red velvet.
The man whose name she had not gotten was looking cautiously at the door when the fireplace whooshed to life, causing him to jump. Batgirl was smirking a bit, and Spoiler was cursing and putting out her cape, since the corner had been too near the ghostly flames.
Out of the flames stepped a tall woman, maybe up to the tip of Vi’s nose. Curly hair pulled back, wide eyes, mocking smile, and a dress that wasn’t exactly Jane Austen. The sleeves were Tudor-ish, she guessed, with a lower waist and puffy back. Maybe 1820s, 1830s? It was pre-War Between The States, that was all she knew.
Of course, she was also made of pale green fire that moved like water, so Vi probably shouldn’t be commenting on the dress.
“Well, as I live and breathe-“ she said in a crackly voice.
“Which you aren’t,” Spoiler muttered. Everyone ignored her.
“Is that you, Mr. Blood?” the spirit asked coyly. Spoiler mimed gagging, which probably helped everyone living’s “holy shit” factor. “How are you still walking around?”
Vi blinked. Okay, this was getting a bit weirder than she had been anticipating. Louise Le Grange had died over a century and a half ago. Either this man had an uncanny resemblance to an ancestor…
“A method which is quite useless to you, and far more a curse than anything,” he said with a sigh. “So please desist from what I know you’re thinking.”
…Or something else entirely. She didn’t see pointy ears, but god knows that meant nothing. Except for a lack of Spock jokes.
“Now you’ve got me curious, though,” Le Grange said with a smirk. “And I’m quite impossible to dissuade.” She sat cheerfully on the couch, not setting it on fire. An act of will? Or was the fire only a supernatural metaphor? “So, I’m afraid you shouldn’t bother. Now, how exactly are you still walking around?”
~
Batgirl walked to the door, noticing it was coated with a film of green. She paused to look at the magicians in the group. Le Grange was staring at Blood, who was trying to prepare something without her noticing. Spoiler was trying to keep Vi from breaking. Vi didn’t seem to need much help, though, so Batgirl was going to listen to what Oracle would say and use her brain.
She pulled out a Batarang and slowly held it to the green flame. She felt a buzzing and scowled. Like a wire. Not even touching before it hurt a bit. They could maybe get through, but she wasn’t sure they wouldn’t be hurt badly.
She pulled out the knife, noticing shapes cut in the glass. It was almost… pretty. And sharp. The buzzing didn’t happen, so she looked for where the green light was heaviest.
The lock. Lots of things with locks here.
She nodded at Steph, who started moving Vi closer to the door. The woman looked at Blood, who was too close to Le Grange to run away, then at Batgirl.
Cass showed her the knife, then nodded at Le Grange. Could it hurt her?
The strange woman closed her eyes, thinking? She saw things. Maybe seeing if it would work.
She opened her eyes and nodded, then threw one of the knives with surprising aim. It hit Le Grange in the heart, and the green light collapsed with a whoosh.
~
Batgirl was clearly disapproving, so Vi decided to explain. Really, communication solved so many problems. Well, except for the bits about psychic powers. But that could be blamed on bad communication, such as lying by fakes.
“It scrambled her signal for a little bit. Probably a very little bit, actually,” Vi said. “We have about fifteen minutes to do… whatever we’re actually supposed to do.”
Blood- who was Jason Blood, on the Justice League for about five minutes, if she remembered right- was studying the knife. A crack had appeared in the mirrored glass, and Vi mourned it a bit. She’d been making those knives for a decade, and had put a ton of effort into learning how to make mirrors for them. “Out of curiousity, where did you learn to make these?”
“My dad’s workbooks,” Vi said, holding out her hand to no actual use. He was tapping it curiously. “They got FedExed to me when I turned eighteen.” She rather loved her cousins. Her eldest brother was a jackass, but Nate had actually explained things.
“Hmm… these look vaguely familiar. Does magic run in your family?” he asked.
“You could say that,” Vi said wryly. “Dad was a changeling. He could do the whole Pied Piper shtick with his violin. The family has a range of gifts. Mind you, I didn’t know this until I got the books, but I suppose it’s the thought that counts.” That was an extremely abridged version of the story, but considering the fact that a ghost witch- oh, god, that sounded ridiculous in her own head- was probably going to come back to kill them all in a few minutes, they didn’t have much time.
“This is nice, but maybe we should follow Batgirl?” Spoiler said, pointing at the open door.
“Probably,” Vi said, pretending she didn’t notice him tucking the broken knife in his pocket. It wasn’t like she hadn’t given him a whole one a little bit ago.
~
Stephanie was trying to be stealthy. It was one of the things she was good at. Of course, seeing as the other two weren’t bothering…
“Batgirl?” she called out. “Where’d you go?”
A dark blur came from the vaulted ceiling and landed in front of her.
She totally didn’t scream.
“Don’t do that!” Steph said, looking warily up at the ceiling.
“Priceless?” Cass tried, grin apparent even under the mask.
A chuckle from the peanut gallery, and Steph looked around. There was high ceilings with a wooden vault-y thing evidently strong enough to hold Cass, barely faded green wallpaper with big roses, dirty carpet runner, and gouges in the wooden floor. Old gouges, probably from Le Grange’s death. There was also a staircase leading to a darkened upstairs.
“Where should we go?” she asked.
“She’d have needed a workroom- Gotham was a dangerous town even then. She couldn’t have risked the details of what she was doing to leak out, and many of her experiments would have needed to be kept safely from the rest of the household, to stop accidental poisoning if nothing else. There are two places for Le Grange to have hidden her workroom- and her workroom will have the source of whatever power gives her sway over the house. One is in a room she frequents- a study or her bedroom. The second is the usual cliché,” Blood explained.
“The basement,” Steph scowled.
“Split up?” Cass suggested. Steph made a mental note to convince Oracle that Cass desperately needed to see a horror movie or six.
“That never ends well,” Blood pointed out. “Miss Beklea, I don’t suppose you can tell where the source of Le Grange’s power is coming from?”
Vi shook her head. “The house itself is trying to hide it. I can’t pull the kid’s… signatures, I guess. Even if they were dead, the security wall Le Grange built should have kept them trapped in the house. Kind of like a security guard, actually. It’s slightly alive. Not smart, really, but capable of some reactions.”
“House would try harder when you poke the wrong spot,” Cass pointed out. Stupid guards did that.
Vi nodded. “Hard to tell while wearing this, though,” she held up the chain of old coins, clinking reassuringly. “And if I take it off I’d be more of a liability. Possession is never fun.”
“A thorough search it is, then,” Blood said. “Probably for the best- she might have attempted to build in multiple such centers in case of discovery.”
Cass tilted her head.
“Le Grange might have made more than one place for us to destroy,” Steph translated. “Planning ahead,” she said with a grin. Cass nodded.
“Upstairs or downstairs?” Vi asked. She had a knitting needle in one hand, and a mirror-knife in the other.
Steph decided that she really didn’t pull off threatening. Even with the creepier than normal shadows.
~
“Upstairs,” said Jason Blood with a slightly disturbing smile. But the memory of Louise Le Grange and the incident involving a spider, a shriek, and a fountain. “While I can see her using the basement for extra security, I cannot imagine her spending extra time there, given the limits on mind-controlled servants. Besides, it not like it actually worked last time."
Clearing a dank basement that would have had to have leaked in her long dormancy would be next to impossible for a bundle of addled teenagers. Louise seemed to think she was still alive, with the same mannerisms. Odds were good that Louise would still be afraid of spiders.
“Upstairs it is then,” Spoiler said, heading quickly up the stairs.
“Miss Beklea-“ he started, to get firmly interrupted.
“Vi. Or Violet, if you have to. Miss Beklea is my mother.” She gave a puckish grin and shone a flashlight up the stairs with surprisingly methodical movements. “I’m the artist, she’s the writer.”
“Writer? Wait, Roxanne Beklea?” Spoiler was bouncing a little. “Her stuff is awesome!”
Vi turned to her. “Yeah, it’s awesome until she decides that asking you five million questions about paint is a good idea. And that ARCs are good Christmas presents.” She refocused on Jason. “Sorry for the interruption.”
“Did you manage to discover how Le Grange’s victims were lured inside the house? I can’t imagine more than a few people a decade are willing to come out here, and most would not make it as far as the clearing. You mentioned that most of them were here on a bet?” He was curious about that fact, having a suspicion that if they did not at least contemplate the idea of a living, willing accomplice, it would come back to haunt them.
“Not with all of them- the most recent boy was here due to a bet. He was…” The flashlight shook a little bit. “He was egged on by a girl. So was another of the victims, another boy a few school districts over. The rest weren’t really reflecting on the why. Someone helped the runaway- Annie Fredricks, I think- out of an alleyway, and they had problems carrying her. She was maybe what, ninety pounds? It might have been a teenage girl.”
“Why?” Batgirl asked. “How did they come here?”
“Like calls to like,” Jason reminded the girl. “She might not have been driven away, but…”
“Called home?” Batgirl finished. He nodded. “So what does Le Grange want?”
“Her body back, or some sort of substitution, I’d guess,” Violet was looking at the staircase warily. “I’m also guessing that the other stairways are more discreet.”
“The second floor was for guests, the third for servants, and the fourth for herself,” he listed. “I would assume the fourth floor would be where her materials would be.”
“So… what was Le Grange originally planning on doing?” Spoiler asked in the tones of someone who really didn’t want to know.
“An immortality ritual that was doomed to failure anyway,” he answered sourly. They usually failed, and were usually messy. Somehow he ended up having to clean it up.
“Can she body-hop? Because I’ve seen that movie and it sucked,” Spoiler was- he thought- looking around at the hallway. “Also, is it just me or is this a trap?”
“I’m not certain, and it’s most likely a trap, yes,” he admitted just as the doors creaked open, gleaming green reflections showing at eyelevel even without the flashlight. The teenagers were slightly slack-jawed and loose limbed, much like the servants had been when Louise was alive.
“Braaiiins,” Spoiler said mockingly.
Somewhere, he knew, Etrigan was laughing at him.
~
Stephanie reviewed what she knew about the zombies. (Well, people who were being mind-controlled. But zombie was quicker and fit.)
One- They didn’t feel pain as much as they would if they were normal.
Two- They were a bit slower.
Three- They couldn’t be drugged.
Four- They were stronger than your average bear.
Five- Their eyes were really freaky and glowy.
Cass had knocked one over with something that Steph knew from experience would have someone throw up. The zombie was clumsy getting up, but more from the mind-control than pain.
Blood was attempting something magic that was crashing against green fog, and Steph was pretty sure only one of the magicians were holding back. After all, minions were disposable. Jason would have to deal with the wrath of an angry Bat if Cass got hurt.
Vi had thrown a long red ribbon that was tangling over one of their opponents, and holding off her opponents pretty well. Mostly because the ribbon was either a lot longer or a lot stronger than it looked. Or maybe both. A tiny model net the size of her hand was thrown, growing and catching the ribbon girl and another boy, who couldn’t move. Another was behind her, and she mostly dodged the zombie, a knife meant for her gut hitting her thigh instead.
And then Stephanie noticed the curling green light that was busy defying laws of science she was supposed to be studying and filling the room.
She blacked out pretty quickly.
Part Two is found at...
http://clutzycricket.livejournal.com/8392.html#cutid1