Okay, Let's Go

Angelica Blaze took Lois Lane's hand and flashed her a smile—not her Mona Lisa smile, but a smirky little-kid grin—and led the reporter outside. Once on the street, the self-proclaimed supervillain threw her head back and closed her eyes, as if sniffing the wind.

When her eyes opened, Lois noticed that they were pure white, with no pupil or iris...and when she moved, she strode quickly, purposefully. Held herself upright, shoulders back, as if daring anyone to get in her way. It was a kind of status projection, Lois recognized—like an ape declaring their status.

For some reason, the reporter found it very attractive.

They walked in silence for several blocks. To the edge of the warehouse district, where the decaying architecture of old Metropolis, destined for urban renewal, gave way to the high-bricked gardens of former industrialist mansions. In Gotham, those same buildings would long ago have become crackhouses, or torn down for tenements, but in Gotham the silent houses could stand empty for decades as owners squabbled over rights...safe and secure...and as they approached a set of gates, Lois noticed signs of habitation.

Rust had been cleared from the iron hinges; the weeds that might have choked the brick footpath were pulled and cleared, no trash on the sidewalk, no graffiti on the walls. Great willow-trees shrouded the house, but she could see a light in a window.

"Stay close," Angelica warned, as she released Lois's hand. "Say nothing. I won't let him hurt you, but my brother is as powerful as I am...and he doesn't like it when someone interferes with his games. No more than I do."

Blaze raised her hand a whispered a word. The gates creaked open...and the dickgirl strode in, the reporter in her wake.

The garden was wild, but showed signs of life. The climbing vines had been cleared from the walls, the tall grasses cut. That still left the flower-beds choked with weeds, the broken statues of bare-breasted women half-reclaimed by nature. Frogs with golden eyes peered out at her from stagnant ponds, serpents slithered just beyond the brick path, bats fluttered through the night from the trees.

Six steps up to the main doors, which opened before Blaze could do her little trick again. They walked straight in, and Lois saw bare wood-paneled walls, floors worn smooth with the passage of many feet, but the lightbulbs in the old sockets were new LED models, and Lois didn't see any dust or dirt.

The entrance hallway had several exits, but only one had lights burning: at the very end. They went forward, the lights winking off behind them as they passed.

Once, perhaps, it might have been a library. Now the floor-to-ceiling shelves were empty, and on the bare floors had been drawn five elaborate pentagrams, arranged to that each one was the corner of a single, more complicated pentagram that took up the entire room.

In four of the pentagrams, naked women lay with limbs spread out. A dark-haired man, hairy and broad of shoulder, in expensive-looking dress pants and a white silk shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow was putting the finishing touches on a symbol with red paint.

"Ah, sister," Colin Thornton said. He looked up from his work and smiled at the two women. "You are just in time. And you've brought the last piece I need for my little project."

"Brother," Angelica Blaze acknowleged. She examined the elaborate occult diagram with a critical gaze. "What are you doing here?"