Howl Like A Wounded Animal

Something hot and warm splashed Lois Lane's nails. The Scarecrow's howl had nothing human in it. Like a horse screaming on a battlefield, or a wolf caught in a trap. With a sudden surge of strength, he pushed himself up and off of the reporter...

Skin tore. Her arm jerked as he half-leapt, half-ran. A scarlet rain fell on the carpet, and something more solid fell down, to lay on the carpet. Lois stared at the villain as he bolted for the balcony. His pants half down, blood streaming down his legs...the glass door had been opened and he didn't stop, going straight through the open portal and then over the side.

Like that, the Scarecrow was gone.

Time returned to its normal course. Lois stared down at the blood on her hand, beneath the nails. Pointedly did not look at the pink lump on her carpet. She brought herself to her knees, and then stumbled into the bathroom.

It reeked of smoke. Lois ran the water, squirted liquid soap into her hand. Her toothbrush, destined now for the trash can, scrubbed her nails, to get the tell-tale red stain away.

"I killed a man," she said out loud.

"There's no corpse," a woman's voice said from the balcony. "Sneaky little shit, but resourceful. I suspect Batman has given him good practice in preparing emergency escapes. If it makes you feel better, there are special parts of hell set aside for would-be rapists."

Lois left the bathroom, to see who was talking.

A woman, or something shaped like a woman, knelt on the carpet. Dark horns curled back from her brow; her long black hair was curly and wild. Skin the color of fresh blood on parchment, a lit cigarette in her hand, smoke curling up from her nostrils. Even squatting where she was, Lois could see that standing she would be a head taller than Lois...and she was dressed in something like an Egyptian princess, bare arms and legs, a kind of long loincloth and a pectoral that covered her nipples but nothing else.

Red fingers with long black nails plucked the pink bit of meat off the carpet and popped it in her mouth. Lois flinched as she saw the teeth bear down on it, then swallow. Slowly, carefully, the red-skinned intruder unfolded herself. Thin and lanky, all muscles, no fat. If a human could be built like a greyhound, they might look something like this woman. One arm reached out to Lois.

From nowhere, a pack of cigarettes emerged into her crimson palm.

Nothing up her sleeve, the reporter noted, because she doesn't have any sleeves.

"Cigarette?"