Sell you a Bridge chapter 56

Gotham City July 21st 2010 12:00 AM EDT

The  look on Lady Shiva's face was pretty fucking amazing, I'm not going to  lie. It wasn't fear, which was pretty impressive considering how scary  Jim could be when he put his mind to it. It looked more like she had  sucked a lemon or something, but still very amusing to see and  expression like that on someone so clearly capable. I'd told her Jim was  my mentor, but I suspect she wanted to drag me back to her base and  hand me off to her boss, thinking even Jim wouldn't fuck with the entire  League of Shadows.

Clearly  what she hadn't wanted was to get into a fistfight with a ghost.  Because I didn't care how skilled she was, no martial artist in the  world was taking on Jim and winning. The pretty assassin woman sneered  out into the dark, unable to tell where my ghostly teacher was, which  was fair because I couldn't either. She sounded pissed when she spoke  "Craddock! Are you setting yourself against the Shadows? The Demon's  Head will not be pleased." Her aura was seething with repressed rage and  wariness as she spat the words.

Jim  snorted and the toll of that eerie cemetery bell cracked the night,  literally shaking the ground under our feet and cracking the road  between Cheshire and Lady Shiva. His voice boomed out again, still  coming from everywhere and nowhere "Don't throw around your Lord's name  at me girl. The Demon's Head and I have had words before, and he knows  better than to beard me in my den. The boy is my apprentice and is under  my protection. If Ra'as has a problem with that he can come and tell me  himself."

That seemed to piss  her off more than the implied death threat. "You dare blaspheme The  Demon's Head! Pitiful specter! You'll regret this!" She seemed to want  to lash out at him, but since she couldn't even see him it was pretty  futile. Cheshire stood back and seemed wary, not that I could see the  look on her face through the mask. Lady Shiva waited for Jim to respond,  but he didn't and she seemed to realize she wasn't going to take him  down with her razor sharp tongue so she spun on her heel and stalked off  into the dark.

It  was probably in poor taste to watch her butt when she walked away, but  in my defense, it was a phenomenal butt, and she had her back to me  anyway so it wasn't like it was bothering her. I both loved to see her  go and very much enjoyed watching her leave. I expected Cheshire to go  with her, but to my surprise she stayed behind. Her aura was  complicated, guilt, gratitude, a small amount of amusement, and a not  inconsiderable amount of fear all mixed together into a cocktail of  emotions that I didn't have the faintest guess as to the cause of. She  stood there for a minute, just staring, until I thought she might be  mute or something.

Finally  though, after an extremely long pause, she spoke "Gentleman Ghost. I  hear you're mentoring my sister." I froze. I...had known Artemis had a  sister, she mentioned her a time or two in passing, but she never went  into detail, which made perfect sense now that I knew she was with the  Shadows like Artemis's dad. It also explained the weird familiarity  during our brief skirmish. I recognized her moves because I'd sparred  with Artemis a dozen plus times. Presumably they had both learned their  skills from Larry.

She  paused for a bit again, but the silence was heavy, she clearly had more  to say and was just figuring out how to speak. Jim must have gotten  that too because he didn't speak either, and eventually she started  talking again. "Thank you. The Shadows aren't always kind to the  children of their members. I wanted better for her. Maybe being a  professional thief wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but then again I'm  an assassin so I can't exactly take the moral high ground here. Thank  you, for keeping her safe. I've checked in on here the last few weeks.  She seems happy."

She  very specifically didn't glance at me, but I had the very disturbing  feeling she knew who I was as well, which admittedly wouldn't be hard to  figure out if she knew who Artemis was learning from. Still, I could  see in her aura that she had no plans to leak the information and I was  grateful for it. Jim finally appeared, stepping from the dark in the  span of a split second without any warning, the glow of his brilliant  white suit pushing back the night as he strolled up to the both of us.

He  stopped a few feet away and tipped his hat to the cat masked assassin  "Your sister is a joy to teach, and as you've seen today I take care of  my own. Don't worry about her safety, she's in the best hands possible."  Standing this close, and with his magic still active, I could feel  Jim's presence crushing down on me, like an unnatural trying to smash me  flat into the pavement. He seemed to notice out discomfort because  between one second and the next the energy disappeared, leaving us both  feeling much better.

Cheshire  nodded again and turned to leave stopping a few feet away with her back  to us. "Can you...not tell her you saw me? I know it's not a fair thing  to ask, but she's happier without me around. With you watching her back  she might finally have a chance to be free of that deadbeat dad of  ours, but that won't happen if she drags herself back into things  because of me." Her voice sounded sad and resigned, and I got the  impression that this was an unusual amount of selflessness for the older  girl.

Jim  nodded again and she vanished into the dark, following behind Lady  Shiva. We watched them leave and stood still for a minute to make sure  they were gone before we turned and headed for the clock tower. Jim  chuckled as we strolled along "You certainly have a knack for attracting  dangerous women don't you lad?" That statement seemed to have a deeper  meaning so I gestured for him to continue. "We ran into traces of your  old flame today, and we have a problem." His voice sounded grimmer than  I'd ever heard it.

It  did not bode well when my spectral mentor was worried. "What kind of  problem could she possibly be for all of you? She's a delusional,  mentally, and emotionally unstable eighteen year old girl who was just  brought back from the dead. And judging by her last plan she wasn't  really much of criminal mastermind even before all that. What do you  mean you found traces of her?" Deep down I'd been afraid of this,  terrified they wouldn't be able to catch her, but I hadn't expected it  to really happen.

Jim  was silent for a minute. "There is a man. A legend in our line of work.  They call him the Designer. His plans are famously intricate, perfect  to the last detail. The Designer ruled over the criminal underworld for  decades in the twentieth century. The Designer wasn't like Holiday, he  wasn't a household name. Only the right people knew he even existed, but  he was considered such a power that even the Court had to pay heed to  him on the rare occasions when he chose to come here." He  sounded...impressed by this guy. Which was pretty scary all on its own.

He  shook off the distraction quickly though, returning to his train of  thought. "His sojourn here was before my time in Gotham, mind, but not  by much. I heard about him when I arrived. Well today I met him, after a  fashion. Your former paramour seems to have contacted him somehow and  hired him to design a plan that would enable her to reach her goal. How  she achieved this I haven't the faintest idea, but she has. We spoke to  one of his corpse puppets when we were tracking her, he uses a chemical  that lets him use the dead as servants."

That  sounded...bad, but not like the end of the world. "Well now you know  he's involved so we can work around him. We just need to find out where  she is and we can go get her. Who cares if this guy is some arch  criminal, doesn't mean you can't kick his ass. Solomon Grundy was  working with Morgana and you took him out easy. That's some major  firepower, you can take some old timey criminal puppet master." I didn't  get the big deal here, Jim was a powerhouse and this guy sounded like a  regular person.

He  shook his head sadly "I could. But I would have to find him first. That  is the terror of The Designer. He doesn't use brute force. From the  moment he became involved every step we took was one he anticipated.  Don't misunderstand, I bow my head to no one, I do not fear The Designer  and I believe we could circumvent his plans. But not in time. We only  have a few days remaining. We will continue to search but Nimue and I  are also acknowledging that the Labyrinth may come to Gotham no matter  our plans."

My  shock at that announcement must have been obvious even through the  mask, but I had to say my piece anyway. "That's insane! We can't just  give up. You want to just let my psycho ex become a goddess and lord  over all of Gotham with the powers of however many sacrifices she  manages to get? Because I'm gonna be honest boss I don't think this is  going to be a great place to live once Annabel is running things. She  seems to have been indoctrinated into the whole Court supremacy thing  pretty early and bought it hard. She'll have Talon's patrolling the  streets, assuming she even leaves any normal people alive and doesn't  just convert them all."

I  could almost hear the eye roll "Don't be insipid boy, I didn't say  that. The arrival of the Labyrinth is the beginning of her plot, not the  end. She needs the sacrifices to accrue her power, and she needs to  wait in the maze to grow stronger. The Designer will be helping her  raise the Labyrinth, but he can't plan the Labyrinth. No one can, we  have no clue whats inside. I'm saying we lose the battle so we can  prepare to win the war. We strengthen ourselves so we can assault the  Labyrinth before the sacrifices can be gathered and stop her before she  can ascend."

I  hadn't considered that. It made sense though. We had been treating the  ritual like the end of our problems one way or the other but we had  other options here. We could storm the Labyrinth and take her down  before the sacrifices made her too strong. Hell she'd even asked me to  meet her in the center, so clearly it was possible to get there and she  was confident I could do so. We arrived at the clock tower and Jim led  me inside, where Blood, Madame Xanadu, and my team were waiting.

The  Shadowpact was out trying to track down leads, but that was fine. This  was Gotham business. Jim explained to everyone else what he had  explained to me and we told them our plan. Blood and Madame Xanadu knew  of course, but everyone else seemed almost excited. We talked over the  general outline our our plan, specifics wouldn't be doable until we got a  look at the Labyrinth, but we had a direction, a goal. They would keep  looking for Annabel but I had other ideas. if we were going in to the  Labyrinth I wanted my team at full strength. We had to be ready for what was coming.